greatness lies in you
by TA Salmalin
Summary: Part 4 of 5 of 'history has its eyes on you' series. Four years later, Kakashi thinks he might be ready to try being a regular genin again. the problem being, he's not quite sure what that means.
1. Chapter 1

"I told you you would be a famous ninja one day," Kakashi says.

"I'm hardly famous!" sensei protests.

"Don't sell yourself short," Jiraiya says, clapping sensei on the back. "Smartest ninja of your generation."

"You're just after the reflected glory," Kushina says dryly.

Jiraiya puts a hand over his heart. "You wound me!"

"You're the smartest ninja in the village," Kakashi says, on a one-man mission to make sensei acknowledge his own accomplishments. "No one else has managed to replicate the Nidaime's Hiraishin no Jutsu."

"Well, I didn't invent it," sensei says. "I'm sure anyone could have done it, if they just took the time to study it. And you helped!"

Not really. As the Sharingan's perfect recall faded, Kakashi forgot how to draw a Hiraishin array from memory. Not that he could have explained how he knew how to do that. Mostly he let sensei explain what he thought the next part of the seal should look like until he had a breakthrough all on his own.

"You're both too modest," Kushina says, giving them a hug.

"If I were truly modest, I would have found a way out of this public demonstration," sensei says. "It's turning into a circus."

"Everyone wants to try and recreate it themselves," Kakashi says. "They don't believe that it's really as confusing as you made it sound in your presentation to the Hokage."

"Well I know a building full of researchers with glazed eyes and selective hearing that can set them straight," Jiraiya says. "Not to mention the ANBU squad that hospitalized themselves trying to learn it."

"I explained it very clearly!" sensei says, pouting. "And I have no idea why their chakra drained like that."

"Not everyone's a genius like you, Minato."

"But it was just hard work!" sensei says. "And more than a few mistakes."

"I certainly fished you out of enough trees," Kushina says, laughing.

"I think I've fixed that problem," sensei says sheepishly.

"Everyone should be impressed," Kakashi says. "You've done something no one else alive can do."

Sensei ruffles his hair. "Well, I hardly need the village to tell me that when I've got my number one fan right here. You always believed I could do it, even when I was ready to throw the whole project, desk and all, straight out the window."

"You did do that," Kushina says. "You came running to meet me at the gate, frantically begging for help fixing the wall before the landlord noticed."

"Shh!" sensei says, looking around. "He doesn't know about that!"

Kakashi rolls his eyes. Everyone in the village has heard that story.

"Well this thing is about to start," sensei says. "I should go; I don't want to be late."

"It would be sort of ironic," Jiraiya says. "Considering you're demonstrating an instant teleportation jutsu."

"Not helpful, sensei. Kakashi, why don't you gather up your friends and remind them about dinner at our apartment tonight."

"I'm sure they haven't forgotten, sensei."

"It's polite."

Kakashi has never found a useful counterargument to this. "Fine."

"You've seen the jutsu a thousand times already!" sensei calls after him. "It's not like you're going to miss anything!

A crowd is already gathering by the Hokage Mountain, eager to see a piece of village heritage reclaimed.

Kakashi leaps onto the rooftops, scanning the laughing, talking mass for a familiar face.

"Rival!"

Apparently he needn't have bothered.

"Morning, Gai."

"Have you ever seen such an exciting thing? The Nidaime's secret jutsu!"

Kakashi has seen it, of course, many times, but he doesn't ruin Gai's moment. "I'm supposed to remind you about dinner tonight."

"How could I forget? Your sensei makes the most amazing dishes!"

"That's what I said." Kakashi doesn't bother commenting on the draw of sensei's cooking. Sensei's gotten much, much better at it, to the point where Gai doesn't believe Kakashi when he tells him some of the horror stories.

"Shall we have an eating contest?" Gai asks.

Kakashi winces at the painful memory. "Let's not. Ever again."

"You're not usually one to shy away from a challenge!"

"Well you're winning, so it's my turn to pick."

"I am? You were the first to find and capture a wild goose."

"To my eternal regret," Kakashi says. That's also going on the list of banned challenges. No eating contests, no geese. He shudders. "Yeah, and after that you carried more rocks across the river than me."

"Ah yes! So it is your turn."

"It'll have to wait until tomorrow, though. We-"

"Why not today? Anything can be a challenge with the right mindset!"

Kakashi supposes that's a fair point. "Alright then, whoever finds Hizashi first wins."

"Done!"

Gai races off into the crowd, shouting apologies at everyone he mows down in his enthusiasm.

Most people know to get out of the way when they see the green jumpsuit, so Kakashi doesn't feel too bad about unleashing him. Those with a healthy sense of self-preservation are looking around for the silver shadow that is usually right behind that green jumpsuit, but charging through the crowd at random isn't really Kakashi's style.

"Kuchiyose no Jutsu!"

Two weeks after Orochimaru told him what he was doing wrong with his chakra, Kakashi could have managed a single summon. If he didn't plan on doing anything else chakra-related for the rest of the day.

Though it took him six months to convince sensei of that.

But now he can summon with ease, and Pakkun is able to spend time with his family in the summon world and his human here in Konoha.

There's a puff of smoke.

"Yes, Boss?"

Kakashi doesn't know how he ended up being the butt of that same joke in two timelines. He's no more top dog now than he was then. "Can you help me find Hizashi?"

"You have a pretty good sense of smell, for a human," Pakkun says. "Why can't you find him yourself?"

"Gai."

Pakkun's nose twitches. He hates admitting that he's just as competitive as Kakashi is.

"Sensei's making a special dinner tonight," Kakashi wheedles.

"Now that's worth a hunt," Pakkun says, sniffs the air, and takes off running.

Kakashi shows about as much regard for the crowd's well-being as Gai did, except he doesn't bother with the apologies. Although in his defense, they were expecting him and grudgingly move to the side as he darts by.

"Ah, there you are," Kakashi says casually, like Pakkun isn't chewing on Hizashi's ankle.

Hizashi doesn't question their abrupt appearance; he's used to being the subject of challenges. "Don't you have friends your own age?" he grumbles.

Kakashi is always struck by how little resemblance there is between Hizashi and Neji. He doesn't think it's just his dimming memories; he's lost a Sharingan, not gone senile.

Hizashi is sixteen, about the same age as his future-son when Kakashi knew him best, and they're just… totally different people. They both have the classic Hyuuga looks, of course, but even when the whole world was ending, Neji never looked quite so… beaten down.

Kakashi had stumbled across him entirely by accident, after he and Gai had dared each other to run all the way along the top of the wall enclosing the Hyuuga compound without getting caught.

Okay, so perhaps not a complete coincidence that Hizashi was there, but Gai was the one who fell off practically into his lap, and that was definitely pure chance. With a healthy dose of Gai.

Sensei had to come and apologize to a bunch of Hyuuga higher-ups—but not Hizashi—and whether out of a sense of injustice at that or a desire to connect with a friend long dead and not even born yet, Kakashi took it upon himself to investigate—not stalk—Hizashi.

Hizashi has failed the chuunin exam four times, unspectacularly, and seems resigned to an unremarkable genin career, followed by a transition into early retirement.

It's not an uncommon track for the larger clans, who have plenty of employment to offer their members, but Kakashi doesn't think he's ever met anyone so determined to be dull and average.

Gai finds it personally offensive.

So one day they challenge each other to drop a bucket of water on Hizashi's head. He's a genin; if a couple of kids can sneak up on him, he deserves what he gets.

Kakashi doesn't realize that Gai doesn't know Hizashi has an identical twin until it's too late.

"I don't want to discourage this newfound sense of mischief," sensei says delicately, after another round of apologies. "But maybe leave the future Hyuuga clan head alone."

That's fine, Kakashi couldn't care less about Hiashi anyway.

Gai is grounded, which is sort of novel.

"You're not really supposed to be here with me," Gai says, moving rocks at another of his father's construction sites. Building sure seems to involve a lot of rocks.

"Well maybe I should be grounded, too," Kakashi says. "It was my idea."

Gai thinks that sounds reasonable, and with both of them working together they get all Gai's chores done and have time to go chase chickens (Gai wins that one).

Maito Dai and sensei just sort of shake their heads, throw up their hands, and go back to their actual jobs.

Gai is actually a child, and generally obedient, but it doesn't take too much effort to convince him to resume their campaign to annoy Hizashi. Kakashi carefully explains Gai's error, points out the differences between the two brothers—basically, how they wear their hitai-ate, if you have a human-normal sense of smell—and reminds Gai of the Tragic Thing that is Hizashi's total disinterest in the shinobi arts.

Hizashi is a genin, and probably could have avoided Gai—though one has to factor in a certain Gai-ness that defies rational explanation—but he has no hope against Kakashi.

They swipe his shoes from the bathhouse. They duck him in a river. They throw a duck at him.

Sensei despairs. "How did you even meet this boy? What did he ever do to you?"

"We want to be his friend," Kakashi says. "Jiraiya-sensei says it's a good strategy. He said to tell you it's a pigtail thing."

Sensei puts his head in his hands and mumbles something incoherent.

They do have other things that interest them, and only bother Hizashi about once a week, so Kakashi doesn't see what the big deal is.

After he fails his fourth chuunin exam, Hizashi is quietly shuffled off the team roster and into some mind-numbing accounting job. He has peace for a whole two days before he finds himself with only sparkling green ink to write with.

"Can't you find something else to do?" he asks, tracking them down in one of the practice fields.

It's the first time he's acknowledged them in any way. Kakashi senses victory.

"Yes!" Gai says. "Let's be friends!"

"What," Hizashi says.

"You can teach us ninjutsu!" Kakashi says.

"You're little kids."

Gai casts a despairing look at Kakashi. That cannot be refuted.

"We'll call you senpai," Kakashi offers.

Hizashi sighs. "If I agree, will you stop pranking me?"

"Probably not."

"Fine, whatever. Just leave me alone at work, alright?"

"I thought it made your reports a lot more interesting," Kakashi says, "but if you insist."

And so a friendship was born. Sort of. Hizashi certainly doesn't seem to talk to anyone else, and his perpetual grumpiness is sometimes too much for Gai, but it's good practice for him. He'll know just how to nip this nonsense in the bud when he gets Neji as a student, and avoid a lot of angst and woe and that time Neji almost killed his cousin in the chuunin exams.

Kakashi managed to greatly improve his own relationship with his father, even if it was never everything he hoped it could be, and he's determined to do the same for Neji. He owes him that much.

And poking at Hizashi just never gets old. Kakashi understands Naruto a lot better these days, horrifying as that thought is.

"I found you!" Gai shouts, crashing into Hizashi.

Hizashi keeps his balance through long practice. "Why me?"

"I win!" Kakashi says. "I've been here for ages. I thought you stopped for a snack or something."

"There's a lot of people here," Gai says. "And a lot of Hyuuga. I had to be careful."

"Yeah, it'd be a real shame if Hiashi were embarrassed in public. Again," Kakashi says, not even trying to sound sincere.

Hizashi makes a tiny sound of amusement.

Kakashi is pretty sure this is the axis on which their mutual tolerance rotates. Kakashi and Gai are casually disrespectful toward the Revered Future Clan Head and Hizashi low-key basks in it.

"Did you tell him?" Gai says.

"Oh, I forgot. I'm supposed to remind you about dinner at sensei's apartment. You know where that is, right?"

"You've dragged me there a few times," Hizashi says.

"Well. Good."

"Is this thing ever going to start?" Gai asks. "I'm hungry."

"Hopefully not for another few minutes, because we still have to find Anko," Kakashi says.

"I'll find her first!" Gai says. He takes off, Kakashi right on his heels.

"Wait!" Hizashi calls after them. "Am I supposed to bring anything?"

"No idea!" Kakashi shouts back.

Anko is usually easy to find, because she's always with Orochimaru, and he's tall and distinctive-looking.

Also, there's always a bubble of space around him.

They find Orochimaru quickly enough, but Anko isn't there.

"Dog boy," Orochimaru says. "Other one."

Gai is kind of intimidated by Orochimaru still, and sort of bows nervously before pretending he isn't there. It's probably for the best.

Kakashi has kept an eye on Orochimaru these last few years. He seeks him out every couple of months to make sure he hasn't fallen back on old habits and started dissecting people.

"He broke into my house," Orochimaru says one night, depositing Kakashi on sensei's doorstep.

This is before the Hyuuga Incident and its Corollaries, so sensei was still more worried than annoyed when Kakashi got into places he wasn't supposed to be and had to be returned, or bothered people he wasn't supposed to be bothering. "Sorry?"

"I'm impressed," Orochimaru says. "I'll have to think of something nastier."

"Why the sudden interest in Orochimaru?" sensei asks, after Orochimaru has left.

"I wanted to make sure he wasn't doing something shady."

"He's a respected jounin," sensei says, which totally isn't a denial of potential shadiness. "And that really isn't your responsibility."

"Someone has to," Kakashi says. He's developed a theory about Orochimaru. The man is missing certain fundamental cogs in the wheels of his decision-making process. Kakashi used to wonder how the experiments that produced Tenzou came about. Now he assumes that Danzou just handed Orochimaru a baby and told him to take it apart and figure out how it worked, and Orochimaru did it, with no intervening thought that, hmm, maybe this is a Bad Thing.

Kakashi explains his theory, minus the Tenzou part.

Sensei finds it very troubling.

"Don't worry," Kakashi says. "Danzou is dead now."

"Yes, because that's what I was worried about," sensei says.

Kakashi keeps sneaking into Orochimaru's home and lab, and since it doesn't seem to bother him that much sensei stops apologizing. "Just part of the joys of having a genin," sensei says, dragging Kakashi back to their apartment after the most recent incident.

Orochimaru takes that as advice that he should get a genin of his own.

"What," sensei says, when he gets called in front of the Hokage.

Apparently Orochimaru just took her out of the Academy one day.

"This isn't my fault!" sensei protests.

The Academy can't wait to see the back of her (apparently she's a "troublemaker", which Kakashi has no problem believing), and Orochimaru can be very persuasive, so there's a special graduation exam of dubious standards and suddenly Anko is a genin.

She's the only other genin besides Kakashi without a team, so people who have never met either them or their respective sensei think that they should be natural friends and allies.

Anko is vicious and nasty, and she's on a fast track to being one of Konoha's best assassins.

Which is all very well, but she has this terrifically annoying habit of going on and on about what an amazing sensei Orochimaru is, and it's too bad Kakashi had to settle for the village idiot.

Sensei, impossible man, thinks this is hilarious.

"Hey!" Anko shouts, jumping on Kakashi and almost sticking him in the eye with the dango she's carrying. "I hear your sensei finally did something interesting!"

Kakashi grinds his teeth.

"It's very exciting!" Gai says.

Gai and Anko get along just fine, both completely unable to sit still and endlessly enthused about absolutely everything. She and Hizashi, on the other hand, hate each other. Kakashi just never tries to interact with them at the same time after the Incident of the "Accidental" Poisoning.

"So I'll see you at dinner tonight?" Kakashi asks.

"Yes! Orochimaru-sensei doesn't have time to cook; he's too busy researching new jutsu for the village."

The Hokage interrupts whatever Kakashi might have said. He delivers a speech about how what an historical moment this is, reclaiming a piece of the village heritage, and praising all the young minds that make Konoha what it is today.

Kakashi has heard it all already, and concentrates on finding a good vantage point instead. He's seen the Hiraishin before, of course, but it's the principle of the thing.

Gai clambers up the roof behind him, still a little unsteady on his feet despite all the extra training with sensei and with Kakashi.

Sensei had taken him aside in the early days of his friendship with Gai, and carefully explained to him that some people take a bit longer to gain mastery of their chakra than others, and Kakashi is on the faster side of that scale and Gai is on the slower side.

Kakashi hadn't needed to be told that, and when their "eternal rivalry" was reborn, they confined their challenges to things they could both do.

"Otherwise what's the point?" he asked sensei.

"You always surprise me," sensei says, which seems to be his preferred way of admitting that Kakashi is right without actually conceding the argument.

The Sandaime does like to talk, and Gai has plenty of time to get himself settled before sensei finally takes a step forward, looking rather sheepish and awkward with everyone's attention on him.

"I'll just get to it then, shall I?" sensei asks.

Several people laugh; they were expecting another speech.

Sensei moves into the center of the array, trying out a solemn look to respect the dignity of the moment. He is holding a leaf. It's from one of the great trees created by the Shodaime's mokuton, a species entirely unique to Konoha.

Sensei has an overdeveloped sense of the dramatic.

Also he has more leaves in his hair.

The crowd dutifully falls silent, or at least confines themselves to whispered conversations with their neighbors. A number of learned people of the village come forward to inspect the array sensei has drawn in the dirt—he finished that early this morning, because it was boring and no one would want to watch that part. The foot traffic of this crowd will scuff it out of existence by evening, so even if someone manages to accidentally unlock the secrets of the Hiraishin in a few hours (sensei is convinced it could happen), there won't be a shortcut right into the heart of the village.

The other array is on top of the Nidaime's stone head, which sensei thinks is poetic and the Sandaime thinks would have annoyed him immensely.

"So, er," sensei says, "here we go."

Kakashi rolls his eyes.

Sensei drops the leaf, and he's gone in a flash.

There are gasps—at least the jutsu is dramatic and impressive enough—and the leaf drifts in the wind once, twice, then-

Flash.

Sensei catches it.

There's a moment of total silence, then everyone erupts into cheers.

"That was amazing!" Gai shouts in Kakashi's ear.

Kakashi has the distinctly unimpressed look of someone who has watched their brilliant and theoretically mature sensei teleport around for weeks chasing leaves.

"Very… flashy," some council killjoy says. "But explain to me how this will be of some practical use?"

Kakashi bristles. It's one thing for him to be exasperated with sensei's occasional bout of ridiculousness, but everyone else had better be one hundred percent awed.

"Oh, it's a work in progress," sensei says, enthusiasm undeterred. "We're already working to increase the range and capacity, so one person could sneak across enemy lines and draw the seal, then teleport a substantial force to that location."

He pauses, searching the crowd.

"And my student, Kakashi—come over here!—has had an idea about compressing the seal, so it can be inscribed on the fly."

Kakashi jumps down and shuffles forward, mortified. "It was really your idea," he mutters. He always feels like the worst kind of fraud when he pretends to 'discover' something that he already knew from the future. Though in this case he actually had to do the research to find something to back up his 'sudden insight', so maybe it's not quite as bad.

Sensei seizes him and ruffles his hair. "Nonsense! He's been invaluable in uncovering this jutsu's secrets, tirelessly researching for me. He's the one who found an obscure reference to a form of seal shorthand, which is a fascinating concept, really, because-"

"No one cares about this sensei," Kakashi whispers, stepping on his foot.

"Er, right. Anyway, I think that I can find a way to compress the seal enough that it can be inscribed on something that can be easily moved. A rock, maybe, that can be carried from place to place. Or even a kunai! You could throw it at your opponent, and they think you missed, but bam! You're behind them!"

Sensei gets that slightly manic grin that precedes his greatest successes or his most spectacular failures.

"Though a kunai is kind of small, it might have to be a larger blade…"

"Yes, this is very exciting," the Sandaime says. "A great accomplishment, and already looking to the future. I'm sure this is only the start of all the marvelous things you will bring to this village."

"He needs a nickname," Jiraiya says, and the look on his face is best described as gleeful.

"No."

"Yes."

"No!"

"I was thinking 'the Streak'."

Sensei tries to grab Jiraiya, but he dances out of the way, laughing like a hyena.

Kakashi shouldn't. He really, really shouldn't. "I don't know," he says. "That makes it sound like he's just really fast."

"Or some kind of pervert," sensei mutters, still trying to strangle Jiraiya.

"But it's more like he's here and then he's suddenly there, gone in a, what's the word, a flash?"

Jiraiya comes to a sudden stop, and sensei crashes into him and bounces off. "The Flash? I like it."

"That's not any better!" sensei wails. "Whose side are you on?"

"That just describes the technique," Kushina says. "It lacks a certain… personal touch."

Sensei makes doe-eyes at her.

Kakashi thinks he sometimes forgets certain essential elements of Kushina's personality.

She gives a truly wicked grin. "I had a sort of after-image of that dandelion fluff, how about you Kakashi?"

"Definitely," he says.

"But he doesn't seem to like the name idea. Perhaps we should compose a haiku: Oh yellow fluff/here one moment then gone away/does he flash or streak?"

Sensei makes a strangled noise of utter despair. "That isn't even the right number of syllables!"

The Sandaime finally intervenes, far too late to salvage the dignity of these proceedings. "Citizens, I give you, Konoha's Yellow Flash!"

* * *

Dinner is about as much of a success as one could expect with sensei, Orochimaru, Jiraiya, Anko and Hizashi in the same room.

Kakashi and Kushina spend a majority of the meal exchanging mildly disbelieving glances at finding themselves the well-behaved ones.

Gai and his father eat with a single-minded intensity that's a little frightening to watch. At least Gai is growing so fast he seems taller every time Kakashi looks at him; he doesn't know what Dai's excuse is.

But no one dies, and sensei makes so much food that everyone gets to take some home with them, and Kakashi collapses into bed after, pleasantly exhausted from so much socializing in one day.

He has a nightmare, but changes his clothes and falls back into bed without ever fully waking up, curling up around Pakkun.

He's up early the next morning, because having sensei and Kushina both home for morning training is a rare treat. Sensei has been practically living in the research building, picking apart the Hiraishin, and Kushina is determined to prove to the entire world that she's a fantastic ninja and should definitely be the first female Hokage.

"Let's go!" he says, pushing them out the door.

"Bwuh," sensei says.

"Well then you shouldn't have stayed up drinking with Jiraiya-sensei," Kakashi says repressively.

Kushina, who has the same inhuman tolerance for alcohol as Naruto, just laughs.

Sensei recovers quickly. Years of being the designated driver—basically, his entire stint as genin—and a few awkward incidents where Kakashi had a completely irrational reaction to perfectly normal social drinking, have left him with little interest in drinking to excess.

Also Kushina tends to get annoyed that she is completely left out of the experience.

"Okay, show me what you remember," Kushina says.

Kakashi never really won a single argument to increase their training beyond whatever pace sensei had set in his head, but Kushina was at least willing to teach him some new things, even if she strictly enforced sensei's ridiculous time limits.

Anything was better than drilling the Academy kata over and over.

Most recently, Kushina has been teaching him one of the kata traditional to Uzushio. She didn't begin training until after she came to Konoha, but on her most recent mission she met a group of survivors from her village and brought them back with her. She's been almost as excited about this tie to her past as sensei about his jutsu.

Kakashi likes it; it's full of dodges and misdirections. If he had to compare it to a technique he already knew, or used to know, he would say it was most like the Gentle Fist. This is especially interesting because Kakashi can't imagine a style less suited to Kushina's personality and strengths.

He runs through the first six moves, then she has him do it slowly so she can correct his hand position.

"You pick up on new things very quickly," sensei says, startling Kakashi right out of his stance. He'd almost forgotten the man was there, he'd been so quiet.

Kakashi tries not to scowl. He doesn't miss the Sharingan, with its debilitating physical effects and all the emotional trauma attached to it, but he has not enjoyed learning things the slow way.

"I'm serious," sensei says. "I'm impressed by how well you adapt to different styles."

Kakashi shrugs. It's an old argument, and one that's never going to be resolved because Kakashi can't explain what has him so frustrated.

It's annoying to lose the vast library of jutsu he was (once) famous for, but he could hardly have explained how he knew all of that anyway.

"I think it will help you to see it in action," Kushina says. "Minato, go stand over there."

The rest of the kata, it turns out, involves a lot of takedowns. Sensei spends a lot of time lying on his back in a cloud of dust.

"You're doing that on purpose," sensei says, coughing.

Kushina laughs and makes Kakashi give her a high five.


	2. Chapter 2

Warnings: Some references to Kakashi's difficult past and trauma

* * *

Kakashi has been preparing himself. Sensei has much more free time now that he's finished the major project he's working on, and Kakashi has just turned ten so he's officially on the low side of the average age of a genin. It's time to think about teams again.

He still gets blindsided though, because it's his therapist who brings it up.

"I'm sorry?"

"I said, what do you think about applying for active duty again?"

"What do _I_ think?"

"Yes."

"Did sensei say something about it?"

"No. I told you, these sessions are just between us."

"But-"

"Besides, I don't want to know what your sensei thinks; I want to know what _you_ think. Are you ready to apply for active duty?"

"I-I don't know."

* * *

Next time Kushina has a mission and sensei has to go to work in the morning, Kakashi goes by the Academy. Only one way to find out if he's ready, and better not to have an audience. Just in case.

He comes here a lot, and it amuses him to haunt the same vantage points as when he was a jounin-sensei and wanted to see who the Sandaime was going to try and unload on him this year.

He knows the Academy practice schedule by heart, and arrives just before the students go outside for their physical training. The Academy sensei are far too busy trying to keep boisterous ninja-wannabes in line to pay attention to Kakashi hovering around.

Kakashi automatically looks for Gai, who is attacking a training post with his usual enthusiasm. He's gotten better about balancing energy and power with actual technique, and Kakashi can see hints of the taijutsu master that he'll be one day.

But Kakashi will see Gai this afternoon, and that's not actually who he's here to see.

Obito is sparring with one of his classmates, who is taller and more skilled than he is. But he's not giving up, and keeps getting back up to take another pounding.

One short month into his medical leave, Kakashi started to prepare for when he would be a part of Team Seven. It may take him a long time to learn his lessons, but he won't make the same mistake he made with Sasuke.

He starts by thinking about Obito and Rin for one minute every morning. He tried at night, but it made his nightmares rather too on point. He remembers Obito's goggles, and Rin's smile.

When he can do that without breaking out into a cold sweat, he practices saying their names out loud.

By the time he's managed this, he is occasionally allowed time to himself. Which is fortuitous, because the next step is to see them.

It takes him a couple of days to work up to it, and not consecutive days because he can only go in the mornings, and sensei usually wants to spend time with him, eating or training or reading or just wasting time in close proximity.

He makes it all the way to the Academy the first day, but he panics when he sees the building.

The next time he tries, he doesn't make it out of the apartment.

Sensei notices that, and it's another few days before Kakashi can convince him that he isn't having a relapse and he doesn't need to be hovered over every second.

He has to be more circumspect after that, so in the end it takes more than six weeks from when he decides to go the Academy to when he actually gets there, and even then Gai has to help him.

Unintentionally, but that doesn't mean he deserves any less credit.

Gai's father actually had a real mission outside the village, and asked if Gai could stay at Kakashi's house overnight.

Sensei was beside himself with joy; apparently this "sleepover" is some kind of rite of passage for young children on their journey of socialization.

And it is.

For sensei.

Kakashi really doesn't see how this is any different from camping with your teammates while on a mission, except perhaps somewhat nicer and more comfortable, but this is clearly one of those times he's just wasting his breath trying to talk some sense into sensei.

Anyway, the end result is that Kakashi walks with Gai to the Academy the next morning, and with Gai by his side, chattering away about something Kakashi isn't really listening to, he makes it all the way to the Academy grounds.

He doesn't see Obito or Rin that day, but he is white-faced and shaking on the walk back to the apartment, and has to circle around a few times before he has a hope of convincing sensei that nothing's wrong.

It will be different this time, he reminds himself at least ten times a day. Kakashi is different, he'll appreciate his teammates and acknowledge their skills, and he'll listen to sensei, and he won't go within a hundred miles of the Kannabi Bridge.

He falls out of a tree the first time he finally catches sight of Rin, and he has an interesting time explaining to Kushina how he sprained his wrist. Thankfully sensei wasn't there for that.

But he is persistent, and the day finally comes where he can look at them and not panic.

It's enough so that here, now, he can watch Obito training, see Rin laughing with her friends, and it's fine. He's fine.

They deserve to live out the promise of their lives, and Kakashi doesn't know where Madara is and Sasuke isn't born yet but here is Obito, right in front of him, and it's probably past time that he stop thinking only about himself and remembering why he has this second chance.

Third chance.

It's time.

He's ready.

* * *

"Do you think I'm ready for active duty again?" Kakashi asks over dinner.

"What do you think?" sensei asks.

Kakashi rolls his eyes. "I think that I wouldn't have brought it up if I wasn't considering it. But I'm not the only one affected by my change of status. You'd have to give up your research position."

Sensei frowns and opens his mouth.

Kushina kicks him under the table.

"Ow!"

Kakashi is used to this sort of byplay by now.

"That's a good point," Kushina says. "One Minato has been thinking about, right?"

He dodges before she can kick him again. "Yes, fine, though I still don't think this is something you need to worry about, Kakashi. I've known this was coming, so I've been talking to my supervisor. He thinks we can arrange something where I mostly work on my own projects on my own time, and report in when I can. It helps that I just finished such a high-profile project."

"But will you have time for that?" Kakashi asks.

"Having a genin team isn't a twenty-four hour commitment," sensei says.

"Usually," Kushina says.

Kakashi is suspicious. "I'm a twenty-four commitment all by myself."

"We're going to be trying for a more traditional arrangement once you're part of a team," sensei says carefully. "That means a few hours of training in the morning, and a D-rank mission a couple of afternoons a week."

Kakashi frowns. That doesn't sound dissimilar to his own schedule as a jounin-sensei. Even factoring in the time it took to corral Naruto and Sasuke into actually training instead of brawling, and the tendency of their missions to spiral out of control, he's still quite certain it took up his entire day.

Well, he also had to sneak vegetables into Naruto's apartment.

And deal with Sakura's frequent bouts of insecurity.

And try to get Sasuke to actually talk to another human being at least once a week.

And then he had to talk to Obito.

Okay, so maybe it isn't much of a mystery where all his time went.

"If you're sure," Kakashi says, still doubtful. His presence has a way of complicating things, in his experience.

"I'm sure," sensei says. Firmly. "Your friend Gai is graduating next cycle, isn't he?"

"Hopefully," Kakashi says. "He's still having some trouble with, well, everything that isn't taijutsu."

"So… would you prefer to wait, then?"

"Why?"

"Well… if he doesn't pass, you might be put on separate teams."

"What?" Kakashi says.

"What?" sensei says.

"Uh oh," Kushina says.

"What do you mean, of course we'll be put on different teams," Kakashi says.

"I could easily make an argument that your abilities balance each other out; you weren't the top student in your graduating class, but, well, you set the record for youngest graduate, so that counts for something, and he's somewhere in the low to midrange of his graduating class." Sensei shakes his head. "But that's how I'll sell it to the school board. Gai is the only Academy student you've ever even spoken to; I should have thought he was the obvious choice."

Kakashi is still in shock. "But-but Obito!"

"Who is Obito?" Sensei looks at Kushina. "Do you know what he's talking about?"

Kakashi's mouth opens and closes soundlessly. In truth, he has no idea how sensei first learned about Obito and Rin, and in retrospect it's obvious that with everything that's changed, and this being years before Team Seven was formed, that things would be different.

Somehow he thought that they would just sort of naturally gravitate towards each other.

Which, that was just stupid.

"I have two people in mind," Kakashi says. "Uchiha Obito and Nohara Rin."

"I could talk to Mikoto," Kushina says. "I'm sure she would be willing to make an appeal to the board if I asked. I have no idea who the girl is, though."

Sensei runs a hand through his hair. "That's not the point. Who even are these people? Do they know about your plans?"

"Well, no."

"But—"

"I think maybe we need to resume this conversation tomorrow," Kushina says firmly. "It sounds like we all have a lot to think about."

Sensei allows himself to be led away, and Kakashi retreats to his room early.

How stupid can one person be? He's been so careful about not revealing his future knowledge when it comes to jutsu, he's completely forgotten to account for relationships. Of course sensei was suspicious, him mentioned two people out of nowhere like that, when Kakashi is hardly noted for his social circle. Well, except in a negative way.

Either the prospect of being on a team again has unsettled him more than he'd realized, or his brain has atrophied in the past few years. He needs to step it up if he wants to see his former-future teammates safely to adulthood.

* * *

The next day, tired from a busy night of self-recrimination, Kakashi heads to the Academy as it's letting out to introduce himself to Rin and Obito.

This opens up a whole new level of stress, because it involves actually talking to people.

Gai is the first one out the door, and almost runs Kakashi over. "Rival! You never visit me!"

"Oh… well…" Kakashi says awkwardly.

"Who's your weird friend?" some idiot says.

"Yeah, weirdo," some other idiot says.

Gai scowls at both of them. "Yeah, well… you're the weirdo!"

Ah, adolescent wit.

"Get lost," Kakashi says, tugging Gai away from the idiots and towards Naruto's swing.

"You know I'm working today," Gai says, still kind of drooping from being snubbed by those losers. "I can't hang out with you."

"I know," Kakashi says. "I was just… saying hi."

Gai's pleased grin makes him feel like the lowest worm. "Perhaps I can stay a few minutes. We learned about tracking today!"

Kakashi lets Gai's cheerful babble about his lesson wash over him while he scans the crowd, making acknowledging noises every so often. Maybe later he'll summon Pakkun and they can have a real tracking lesson. In his distraction, he doesn't notice a strange girl walking up to them.

"Excuse me, but are you Hatake Kakashi?" she asks.

"Um, yes?"

She blushes. "I just wanted to tell you… I really admire you!"

Kakashi blushes over his whole face. For the first time in a long time, he misses his mask. "Er…"

"Can I introduce you to some of my friends?" she asks.

"No," he says, to her retreating back.

Gai is laughing at him.

"Shut up!" Kakashi hisses.

A whole gaggle of girls come back with her.

"You're so amazing, Hatake-san!"

"Such a tragic story!"

"Will you sign my book?"

The shinobi history textbook they use at the Academy, the one that's actually a binder so they can add in additional pages, is shoved in his face.

Kakashi finds himself looking at a picture of himself. It's his registration picture. The caption says, Youngest Genin in Konoha's history. The short article accompanying it proclaims, Tragically Orphaned: One Boy's Painful Journey Through Life.

Kakashi lets out a mortified wail. "I'm in the textbook!?"

"Twice," Gai says. "Were you really injured saving the village from Danzou?"

"No! I stupidly went too close to the fight and accidentally got blown up a little."

"Ooh," the growing crowd says. It isn't just girls anymore.

Kakashi is ready to bail out of there. He knows where Obito's house is; maybe he can arrange to accidentally fall into the Uchiha compound the way he did the Hyuuga.

"Oh, Hatake-san!"

Kakashi's head snaps up. "Rin."

She blushes. "You know my name?"

Everyone oohs.

"Oh, I've, er, heard about you. You know, around," Kakashi says. "From Gai."

He step on Gai's foot before the other boy can contradict him.

"I think you're a very strong person," Rin says.

"And, um, so do I," Kakashi says. Gai elbows him. "I mean, me too! Think you're a strong person."

She giggles. So do a lot of other people.

"What's going on over here?"

The crowd doesn't part, forcing the newcomer to elbow his way through.

Obito.

Obito has been, arguably, the single most important person in Kakashi's life. His nindo changed Kakashi's whole outlook on life, his last gift shaped his entire career, and he came close to destroying Kakashi's entire world. Finally speaking to him again is almost more than Kakashi can take. It's very different from watching him from a distance.

Obito finally catches sight of Kakashi, sees Rin watching him with stars in her eyes, and frowns.

Right. Obito has feelings for Rin. Happy future together. Many fat babies.

Just now it would be helpful if Rin admired Kakashi just a little bit less. Maybe all of these people, actually. They know that Kakashi is only ten, right?

"I don't like girls!" he blurts out, then wants to smack himself, because why.

Half the girls look dismayed, and several of the boys perk up.

"Or boys!" Kakashi half-shouts. "Or people!" He hides behind Gai. "Save me."

Gai clamps an arm around his shoulders. "Kakashi only likes people who are serious about their ninja training," he says. "That's why we're best friends and eternal rivals!"

Well, Kakashi reflects. It could be worse.

Some idiots in the back are looking surly. Kakashi isn't sure if they're the same idiots as before, because he immediately forgot what they looked like.

"Well, I heard you aren't even a real genin," someone says.

The crowd looks at Kakashi, waiting to see what he'll do.

He just rolls his eyes and points at his hitai-ate. _No one_ wears one who isn't authorized. Even Kakashi, who spent less than a year at the Academy, had heard the rumors about how ANBU hunts you down and does secret and horrible things to you.

Not that he ever got to do anything like that when he was in ANBU.

Some Hyuuga kid clears his throat, drawing the crowd's attention. "I heard you're crazy."

Back to Kakashi. "Your clan heir has no sense of humor."

There are some scattered giggles, muffled by people with enough clan connections to know not to laugh about the Hyuuga clan to their faces or, indeed, behind their backs.

"Well I heard you're crazy for real," Obito says.

Kakashi gives him a sharp look. His medical leave isn't exactly classified, but it isn't posted on billboards around the village, either. Obito must have gone to some effort to learn that.

He flushes, but lifts his chin.

This is new information to most of the crowd. They eye Obito with interest.

He stands a little taller at being the center of attention.

"Why are you here anyway?" Obito asks. "You even don't go here."

Kakashi can't ask for a better opening than that. "My sensei is looking for a team," he says.

The crowd instantly loses interest in Obito, pressing forward en masse in their rush to convince Kakashi that they are the best choice for the job. The Hiraishin display is fresh in everyone's minds, and sensei is well-liked throughout the village, and well-known as Jiraiya's prized student.

Kakashi very seriously considers using Kawarimi and hiding in the tree, but that wouldn't be fair to Gai, who still hasn't mastered it yet.

Gai who is looking at him with a certain confidence that Kakashi doesn't often see in this youthful (ha) version of his friend. A confidence borne of being Kakashi's only real friend.

Kakashi is starting to get an idea of why sensei assumed that Gai would be in his squad. This is going to be excruciatingly awkward to explain.

"What makes you so special?" Obito says, voice cutting through the general chaos. "You think you can just come down here like some sort of celebrity and everyone will fall all over themselves to be part of your team?"

"…no?" Kakashi says lamely. He'd been hoping that Obito and Rin would be honored to be on sensei's team, in spite of having to put up with Kakashi, and his own status as a minor celebrity is entirely unwelcome.

"I'm sure anyone would be honored to be on your team, Hatake-san," Rin says.

Kakashi winces.

"You already have a sensei all to yourself and you know two of the Legendary Sannin!" Obito shouts, all indignation at Kakashi's perceived advantages.

Actually, Kakashi knows all three of the Sannin, and not just because he's from the future. He tried to stab Tsunade once when she came to ask his father about something, back when he was three and going through a phase where he tried to "protect" the compound from intruders. She couldn't resist bringing it up at every opportunity when she became Hokage.

Somehow he doesn't think it will help to mention this to Obito just now.

"None of that is his fault!" Rin protests.

Kakashi wishes she would stop trying to defend him.

Obito glares at him, trying to set him on fire with his eyes.

"I don't like girls?" Kakashi offers weakly.

Obito's childish petulance becomes something else. There's a real emotion there, anger or jealousy or some combination of the two. It's nothing like that future version of Obito, but Kakashi still gets a chill down his spine.

"I guess," Obito says, "that that's why you're always hanging around Orochimaru."

Then Kakashi does something he should not have.

He punches Obito.

* * *

"You broke his jaw," sensei says.

"I didn't mean to," Kakashi says.

"You _broke_ his jaw."

"I'm very sorry."

"You broke his _jaw_."

Kakashi gives up.

" _You broke his jaw_."

* * *

Kushina comes to find Kakashi later that night.

"I sent Minato out to have a walk," she says. "He needs to cool down."

That gets a small smile out of Kakashi. Kushina is legendary for her temper.

She grins at seeing it, and nudges his shoulder. "You're not in trouble, you know."

He raises an eyebrow at her.

"I mean, you might get in trouble in the future, but you sent yourself to your room. Between you and me, I think Minato felt sort of cheated."

Kakashi sighs.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

He shrugs.

"You know, I used to get in fights all the time at the Academy," she says.

Kakashi does know that. She is very proud to be known as the Red-Hot Habanero.

"So I get it. Sometimes you have a really good reason, just one that no one else sees. And sometimes you don't have a good reason, you just get so mad you act without thinking." She nudges him again. "You want to tell me which one this was?"

Kakashi sighs. "Both, I guess. Mostly the last one. I was stupid."

"Maybe," Kushina says. "Everyone does stupid stuff sometimes."

He sighs, staring broodily at the wall like he has for the last hour. "Am I going to get an official reprimand?"

"You might, but I doubt it. You're a genin, but you've spent almost the entire time since graduation on medical leave, and Obito is three years older, and taller and broader. They'll probably decide it was a fight between young ninja trainees. These things happen."

"Except he's in the hospital."

"These things happen," Kushina repeats, firmly. "You're still young."

Except Kakashi is an adult, and he should definitely know better.

"So it sounded like there might have been a reason for the fight," Kushina says.

Kakashi's not sure he appreciates that she keeps calling it a fight, when in fact only a single punch was thrown. It makes it sound less like an assault, but he's not sure he deserves that. "It was stupid," he says. "I don't think Obito even knew what he was implying. I'd bet my entire year's salary that he was just repeating something he heard from one of his older cousins. He's way too impressionable."

"Uh huh," Kushina says, not sounding convinced.

"He hates me now," Kakashi says. He feels awful for hurting Obito of course, that is the exact opposite of everything he was trying to do and now Obito is in the hospital and no matter what Kushina says Kakashi feels like a bully. But Obito will receive the best care and he'll make a full recovery, while their nascent comradeship has a much less promising prognosis.

"Yeah," Kushina says, never one to beat around the bush. "He can't really talk, but he was definitely hissing angrily when Minato went to see him."

Kakashi droops. It just figures.

* * *

The Uchiha clan takes the incident a

s a personal insult, and insist that Kakashi be put through a formal hearing.

"This is excessive," sensei says. He and Kushina are escorting Kakashi to the Hokage's office. "This doesn't even have anything to do with you anymore, it's a political play."

"I know that," Kakashi says.

"So you don't need to be upset."

"I'm not."

Sensei and Kushina exchange looks over his head.

"I saw that," Kakashi says.

The Hokage's office has been rearranged slightly to make room for a long table where the Hokage's desk usually is. The Hokage is there of course, along with several people Kakashi doesn't know, all looking very solemn and important. One of them is vaguely familiar; he thinks it might be the jounin-commander who preceded Shikaku.

Sensei gets all tense and frowny when he sees the arrangements, but Kakashi has been in this position before. Not often, but it was one of Danzou's strategies to try and regain control of him after he left ANBU.

Of course, the most recent incident was for sabotaging his own genin during that awful repeat of the bridge mission, the first time he traveled back in time.

Not the Kannabi Bridge, the other one. Was it still named the Great Naruto Bridge? Probably not.

Also, not relevant right now.

Kakashi gives sensei's arm a reassuring pat, and goes to stand in front of the panel.

Sensei glares and goes with him. So does Kushina.

Obito comes in, and Kakashi has to quickly look away, because his jaw is wired shut and he's looking murderous. Kakashi isn't sure which is worse.

A chuunin stands up and reads off a scroll. "Genin Hatake Kakashi, Registration Number 009720. Being a minor, represented by his jounin-sensei, Jounin Namikaze Minato, Registration Number 006510." He squints at Kushina. "And…?"

"Jounin Uzumaki Kushina," she says, and gives him her registration number.

Sensei has a right to be here, since as Kakashi's jounin-sensei he might also be punished for Kakashi's misbehavior. And apparently because Kakashi is a minor, though Kakashi hadn't known that. That sensei was allowed to be here, obviously, not that Kakashi was a minor. It's been ages since he forgot a detail like that, he's accustomed to living in the past now. But Kushina does not have any legal right to be here. Kakashi knows that, she knows that, the chuunin knows that.

Kushina looks at the chuunin. Her look is best described as 'you want to make something of it?'

He does not. Instead, he coughs and introduces Obito and a stern, older man Kakashi remembers well. The head of the Uchiha clan before Fugaku, he'd called for Kakashi to be executed when he came back to the village with Obito's Sharingan.

Obito does not look pleased or honored that the clan head himself is there to personally defend him. If Kakashi recalls correctly—always a risky assumption—the two hated each other.

Kakashi's actually pretty good at looking like he's paying attention when he isn't, though he mostly didn't bother with the pretense as an adult, so it's easy for him to tune it out as each member of the panel gives a short statement.

He does listen when Uchiha-sama speaks, at length, about the honor of the Uchiha clan and not at all about Obito in particular.

Finally, it's Kakashi's turn.

"Do you know why you're here?" the Hokage asks.

Kakashi comes to formal attention. "As an Academy student, Uchiha-san is, effectively, a civilian. It is a very serious violation of the Shinobi Code of Conduct and Ordinance 57(b) of Konoha Law for a shinobi to assault a civilian. Sir."

"Er. Quite. Do you have anything to say in your defense?"

"No, Hokage-sama. My behavior was inexcusable and unbecoming of a shinobi. I accept full responsibility for my actions."

Everyone is staring at him, even Uchiha-sama. Kakashi doesn't shift out of his formal stance, but he's tempted. There are no defenses in shinobi-on-civilian assault cases. The shinobi is expected to diffuse any such situation non-violently. He can't be the only one here who actually knows Konoha's laws.

"Well in that case-" Uchiha-sama begins.

"There are circumstances that should be taken into account," sensei interrupts. He has a whole speech prepared, about the youth of the parties and Kakashi's unusual status, but Kakashi doubts anyone is really listening. They're looking at the two parties, and Kakashi knows what they'll see.

A genius genin, disgraced and then elevated to (unearned) hero status by his equally controversial father, standing whole and hearty while a schoolboy from one of Konoha's most prestigious clan is still drinking his meals through a straw.

Uchiha-sama somehow manages to convey all of this with one, elegantly raised eyebrow.

"Do we know what the disagreement was about?" the Hokage asks.

Kakashi is confident that they haven't found out. Academy students, he'd discovered back when he was trying to avoid getting stuck with any, will close ranks against any adults intruding on their little lives. He stares straight ahead, determined not to say anything either.

Obito, of course, just makes a sort of muffled grunting noise.

"Well, I asked one of my students to investigate the matter, and-"

Kakashi desperately hopes he means Jiraiya. He and Obito accidentally catch each other's eye, and Obito clearly has the same thought.

They're getting along better already.

Just as he finishes thinking that, the door opens and Orochimaru walks in.

Kakashi goes so tense he alarms both sensei and Kushina.

Orochimaru stalks up to the table and throws a piece of paper on it. "It seems this is all some ridiculous and misguided attempt to defend my honor," he says, glaring at Kakashi like he's personally offended by how ineptly he went about it, and stalks back out again.

There's a moment of silence where everyone looks at the piece of paper, lying there so innocuously.

Uchiha-sama looks like he is imagining all the things that might have been bandied about the compound concerning the Hokage's creepy and unpopular student in front of impressionable young ears and is deeply regretting the life choices that led him to this place.

"Schoolyard brawl?" the possibly-jounin-commander says.

Everyone seizes on this like a lifeline.

"It was even at the school," someone says.

"An argument between students," someone else says. "The Hatake boy isn't even on the roster at the moment, so he's more like a student than a genin."

Kakashi finds himself back in the apartment with very little idea how he got there.

"That's it?" he demands, even though only sensei and Kushina are there to hear him. "That was totally unfair to Obito!"

Sensei gives him kind of an odd look.

"The point of these hearings is to make sure you understand the severity and consequences of your actions," Kushina says. "And I think you might be the only one there who did."


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: A resurgence of Kakashi's self-destructive behavior

* * *

A few days later, sensei comes to talk to Kakashi in his room.

"I've had a word with the Hokage," he says. "You won't be suspended, but you aren't allowed to apply for active duty again for six months. And you're supposed to talk to your therapist if you have any violent thoughts." He shakes his head. "Which is how this whole thing should have been handled in the first place."

"That's it?" Kakashi says.

"Yes. So I would appreciate it if you would un-ground yourself now. Your friend Gai is looking for you."

* * *

Gai failed the graduation exam.

Kakashi doesn't think he's ever seen him so despondent.

"They didn't accept me the first time I applied to the Academy," Gai says. "I was already one of the oldest students in my class."

"That doesn't matter," Kakashi says. "You're still below the age cutoff."

"I couldn't even manage a henge. Everyone can do that."

"You just have a very strong sense of self," Kakashi says.

"I'm never going to pass."

"You will!"

Gai looks a little taken aback by Kakashi's certainty.

"You will, and we'll be ninja together. I can just see us, both jounin, with teams and students of our own, protecting Konoha."

"You really think so?"

"I know so."

"So… did they pick a team for you yet?"

"Oh, I'm not allowed," Kakashi says. "Because I hit Obito that time. I have to try again in six months."

"They'll have the next graduation exam in six months," Gai says, finally looking a little hopeful.

Kakashi looks away. "Yeah."

* * *

Obito isn't allowed to sit for the exam, on account of his injury. Interestingly, Rin doesn't pass, either. She's going to be a frighteningly competent medic, so she must have decided to stay and wait for Obito.

Kakashi waits a few more days before once again breaching the topic of Team Seven.

"I don't know," sensei says. "I really don't think this is a good idea."

"Obito was just annoyed and jealous," Kakashi says. "He didn't mean to say anything really bad."

"That's a very mature assessment, and I'm glad that you understand that, but he's still pretty angry about the punch. Also… kind of embarrassed."

"I'm a ninja and he isn't," Kakashi points out. "And I apologized for that." He doesn't mention that Obito had thrown a kunai at him in the street this morning. He'd probably intended to miss.

"That's true, and it was good of you to apologize, but… emotions aren't always rational." Sensei gets a pained look on his face. "He, well, he doesn't like you."

"No one likes me," Kakashi says.

Sensei bristles. "That's not true!"

"Name one person. Who isn't Gai. And doesn't live with me."

Sensei opens his mouth. Closes it again. "Well, you gave me all those restrictions," he says weakly. "And I think Orochimaru sort of likes you. In his own way."

Kakashi gives him a look. That isn't exactly helpful for his general acceptance in the village.

"Well, _I_ like you," sensei says firmly, squashing Kakashi in a too-tight Kushina hug. "And I'm sure once more people get to know you, they'll like you, too."

Kakashi doesn't want to hurt his feelings, so he doesn't dispute the likelihood of that. "So you're saying Obito might potentially like me someday."

Sensei sighs. "I wish you'd tell me why you're so fixated on this one person."

"Didn't you look into him before the hearing?" Kakashi asks.

"I did, but I didn't mention anything about that to you," sensei says. "Do we need to have another talk about privacy?"

"No." Kakashi won't listen, anyway, so it would just be a waste of everyone's time. He just likes to know everything that sensei and Kushina are doing and thinking all the time. Is that really so unreasonable?

Anyway, sensei is being a hypocrite, because he was totally spying on Obito.

"He's an orphan," Kakashi says. "And his grandmother is getting old and no one in his clan likes him very much. He tries really hard but he just isn't that good at anything, which is especially embarrassing because he's from such a prestigious clan."

"Exactly how long have you been stalking this boy?" sensei asks.

Kakashi dismisses that with a wave of his hand. "He has a good heart. He's a very compassionate person, and a good friend. He just needs someone to give him a chance."

Sensei is staring at him. "All that, huh?"

"Yes," Kakashi says. "I think he could be a great asset to this village."

"I still think this is a bad idea." He sighs. "What was the name of that girl you were interested in again?"

Kakashi smiles to himself. Now that sensei is looking into them, Kakashi is sure that sensei will see whatever it is that drew him to choose Team Seven in the first place.

* * *

Kakashi is totally right, because after only two months of carefully disinterested questioning sensei agrees to put in a request for a team of Kakashi, Obito and Rin. Though he can't make any promises.

Apparently you can't just take whoever you want; the school board, in consultation with the council, decides how the teams are made.

Admittedly Kakashi's Team Seven had been more or less forced on him, but Gai had chosen Lee, who, okay, was the worst student in the Academy and required a special dispensation to graduate, and Asuma had chosen his team, who, to be fair, were a carbon copy of a well-established unit, so—

Maybe Kakashi just doesn't have a typical experience with team selection.

"They won't make the decision right away," sensei says, when Kakashi's hovering gets to be a little too much. "Probably you won't know until the day the teams are assigned."

This is an aspect of sensei's less prominent reputation that Kakashi had not previously considered.

And then one evening someone knocks on their door.

Kushina isn't there; she's been sent on a long-term mission that's so classified Kakashi isn't even supposed to know about it.

Like he's somehow not going to notice when she disappears for a few months?

Sensei opens the door, and it's Orochimaru.

"Oh, it's you," Orochimaru says.

"I live here," sensei says.

They stand in the doorway for a bit.

"Would you like to come in?" sensei says, finally.

"I suppose."

Kakashi hurries to clear the dishes off the table so they have somewhere to sit.

"So," sensei says, determinedly cheerful, "what brings you here?"

Orochimaru appears to consider this very seriously. "My sensei," he says at last, "is a coward."

Sensei makes a strangled choking noise.

"This is for you," Orochimaru says, handing sensei a very official-looking scroll with the official Hokage seal prominently displayed. "Your team request is denied."

"Okay…" sensei says, accepting the scroll without taking his eyes off Orochimaru. "And this necessitated a personal visit because…?"

"You can have those other two, whoever they are, if you really want," Orochimaru says. "I think it's supposed to be a consolation prize. But you can't have Hatake."

Kakashi feels the world drop out from under him. He has to sit down.

Oh, he's already sitting. That's convenient.

"But… but I already have Kakashi! He is already my student!" sensei is saying.

"Not for long," Orochimaru says. "As soon as he is reinstated, he'll have to be assigned to someone else."

Kakashi digs his nails into his palms and forces himself to take deep, even breaths. Hyperventilating will do exactly nothing to help right now. "It's fine," he says, too quiet for anyone else to hear. "It's fine!" he says again, louder this time.

Sensei stops yelling at Orochimaru. "Sorry?"

Kakashi shrugs. "So I won't be reinstated. Even if they force me to sit for the psych eval, I'm sure I can fail it."

"That's… you don't need to do that," sensei says. "Please don't start making things up in your therapy sessions. I'll speak with the Hokage."

Orochimaru rolls his eyes. "Not that this isn't all very touching and dramatic, but obviously you both need to hear a few fundamental truths. I don't know why no one has explained this to you, or why it even needs to be explained."

"Yes, yes, we're all ignorant fools, taking up your precious time with our idiocy," sensei says impatiently. "What's your point?"

"Parents are not allowed to serve as jounin-sensei for their own children," Orochimaru says.

Sensei looks stricken.

"We're not related," Kakashi says, carefully, in case Orochimaru has gone crazy since Kakashi last checked on him.

Orochimaru doesn't even look at him. "Namikaze, use that brain you theoretically possess. You yourself are adopted. It doesn't matter that the two of you aren't related by blood."

"You're adopted?"

"My parents weren't always reliable about things like getting to school on time, or filing paperwork," sensei says dismissively. "It's just a legal fiction, it doesn't matter."

Kakashi wonders who is on the other side of this 'legal fiction'. Maybe it's Jiraiya.

He immediately regrets having that thought, remembering all the long years Jiraiya wandered alone after sensei died.

Orochimaru and sensei are arguing. Loudly.

"Sensei hasn't adopted me," Kakashi says, because this really isn't an issue, and he doesn't understand why they can't see that. Back when he was a teenager and kind of stupid, he wondered about that, but he found out that there would have been all kinds of legal complications because he's technically head of a clan and has a seat on the council. None of that has changed here and now. "And he's not at all like a parent."

They actually stop fighting.

"You're right that you haven't been adopted," Orochimaru says, "but you are otherwise completely wrong."

"Am not," Kakashi says, before realizing how juvenile that sounded. "Sensei fusses constantly over everything I do and say and eat and sets all kinds of arbitrary rules about everything."

Orochimaru is giving him a sort of pitying expression, which is frankly alarming.

Sensei looks like he's about to cry.

This is probably one of those times he just shouldn't have said anything. "You know… like a sensei?" Kakashi finishes weakly.

"Congratulations," Orochimaru says, rolling his eyes. "You have just described parenting. I promise you that most jounin-sensei don't… fuss, or worry about whether you're eating your vegetables."

Well. Kakashi was obviously doing that wrong.

More obviously than having one student go mad and try to destroy the world, and another die, and then accidentally kill that first one in a fight after going back in time, and…

Anyway.

"No one said anything when… Kakashi first came to live with me," sensei says, darting a quick, apologetic glance at Kakashi.

"There were other things to worry about," Orochimaru says. "Like the secret civil war going on right under our noses, and the actual war, and then when the boy went on medical leave it suddenly wasn't urgent anymore. Besides, no one could have predicted that Jiraiya's rising star would suddenly quit going on missions and become a housewife. That's a little difficult to ignore."

"I've been doing important research!" sensei protests. "And there's nothing wrong with being a housewife! …husband. Boyfriend?"

Orochimaru sighs. Heavily. "I'll leave you to ponder that critical distinction. In the meantime, I'm sure I can think of at least a dozen actually useful things I could be doing right now."

He leaves.

Sensei glares at the door for a long time. "I'm still going to talk the Hokage," he says.

Kakashi shrugs. He isn't an idiot, he knows how well that's likely to go. That's why Orochimaru got stuck breaking the news, after all. "Would you consider taking Gai instead of me?" he asks.

"It's not going to come to that."

"But if it does?" This might even be for the best. Kakashi seems to bring out the worst in people. Aside from the obvious (death, despair, total destruction of known civilization), even Gai is more insecure than he remembers, and sensei less successful. "Gai is a good friend; he could be good for Obito."

"I'm not going to just… replace you with another team," sensei says. "They can't actually take you away, no matter what Orochimaru says. If I try and put you on a team, well, _maybe_ , but if they try and use medical leave as an excuse to shuffle around team assignments they'll be setting a very dangerous precedent. I'll give up on the team idea if I have to—though not without a fight—but I won't ever give up on you. Promise."

"Should I get my own apartment?" Kakashi asks.

Sensei laughs and gives him a little shake. "I think it's far too late to claim that we don't have a close relationship. Don't think I'll let you use this as an excuse to finally win that argument."

That's probably fair. Sensei hasn't been at all circumspect about taking care of Kakashi.

Sensei gives him kind of a funny look. "You're taking this very well."

"It is what it is," Kakashi says. "My getting upset won't change anything."

* * *

The Hokage does not change his position. Sensei vows that he won't take a team at all, then, and if they want to take Kakashi they can just come and get him.

Everyone is sort of tiptoeing around the two of them, because sensei is just spoiling for a fight.

After a tense few days, sensei throws himself into his work, which lets him be angry at the Hokage without any risk of getting into serious trouble, and lets everyone else ignore the problem and hope it just goes away when they're not looking.

Kakashi isn't sure what to do. Sensei won't see reason, and the Hokage doesn't value either of them enough to make an exception, and there's nothing about any of it that Kakashi has any control over.

He wishes Kushina was here.

Even Jiraiya, but he's off researching for his book or whatever it is that he does in this time.

Kakashi reminds himself sternly that he is a grown man and doesn't need anyone else to solve his problems for him, especially problems that he brought entirely on himself.

He should have argued more when Kushina first bought an apartment for the three of them. None of this would have happened if he could have just found a way to convince sensei. He managed just fine when he was really this age, and he has in actual fact lived on his own for years, so it wouldn't have been any great hardship.

But there's no point in dwelling on that. He's not going to reorder time yet again for something so foolish and minor. Besides, he's out of friends to sacrifice for the jutsu.

He'll just have to deal with the reality he has now. Sensei is being quite stubborn about not taking a team, as if it weren't his idea in the first place. So what does that mean?

It was fine, if selfish and kind of embarrassing, for Kakashi to take advantage of having such a brilliant teacher all to himself. He's amounted to precisely nothing, and without the Sharingan that isn't likely to change much, but Kakashi really couldn't care less about whether he ever makes it into a bingo book or his perceived prestige as a ninja.

But sensei.

He's already given up so much. He isn't a war hero, isn't really appreciated for all the work he does, and if Orochimaru is any judge, which he usually is, the village has basically written him off as a stay-at-home washout.

It's one thing for Kakashi to never amount to anything more than not being the village disgrace. But sensei should have had a future, a legacy. He was supposed to have Obito and Rin. Obito obviously has incredible potential, maybe could have realized his dream as Hokage, and Rin is going to be such an amazing medical ninja, maybe the best of her generation.

That's a legacy to be proud of.

But nothing Kakashi has thought of has convinced sensei to take them.

It's beyond frustrating.

He thought maybe the problem is Gai. Objectively, Kakashi can see how it might be kind of hard to see Gai's potential, with his current abilities and temperament, but when he tries to explain why sensei should take him anyway, sensei just frowns at him and tells him to have more faith in his friend.

So if he won't accept a new team, and he won't give Kakashi up, then Kakashi will just have to be equal to that legacy all on his own.

Someone to be proud of.

Kakashi has selfishly embraced this little kid persona. He's nothing like the ninja he could have been, with a flee-on-sight order in three villages and the master of a thousand jutsu. The kind of person he is now, sitting around reading silly books and frittering the day away playing with his friends, that's not the kind of person that becomes a great ninja.

But it's not like Kakashi has forgotten how to be that person.

He's lucky, because with Kushina gone and sensei on a furious research binge, Kakashi has a lot of time to himself, and no one's watching him.

He finds an isolated training area, and puts himself through an imaginary jounin exam, improvising with shadow clones when he gets to the parts where he's supposed to fight an opponent.

He more or less collapses against a tree when he's done, which is incredibly frustrating because he isn't much younger now than the first time he took the jounin exam, and he has all these years of experience.

At least he remembers the shadow clone jutsu. That was a bit of a rough moment.

He definitely wouldn't have gotten a promotion out of that performance, though. His taijutsu is okay, maybe mid to upper chuunin level, but that can be improved. He foresees a lot of speed drills and strength work in his future.

But jounin are the elite, and they are expected to bring something unique to the table. He's lost a lot of his ninjutsu at this point, and his effortless command of all five elements. Looking at his water jutsu today, it's hard to believe he once matched the Demon of the Hidden Mist.

How did he get promoted last time? He didn't have the Sharingan then, either.

Kakashi scowls. It's not just his memory for jutsu that's fading. Jounin bring something unique… or a clan ability.

Last time, Kakashi was able to demonstrate a command of his family style, which was both unique and a clan ability.

By this time it's afternoon, and Gai is looking for him. Kakashi is supposed to meet up with him and help with his father's projects this afternoon.

Kakashi is tired from the rigorous workout, but he bites his lip and doesn't complain. He's been getting lazy.

* * *

Kakashi hasn't had much pocket money these last few years. It hasn't really been an issue; sensei buys all his food and clothes and weapons (when Kakashi insists) and toys (when sensei insists), and most of Kakashi's money goes towards the rent anyway.

But now Kakashi is forcibly reminded of that, because he no longer has his father's tanto, and he doesn't have the money to buy such an expensive weapon, nor does he have a good explanation for sensei as to why he needs it.

And really, he should start taking more responsibility for himself anyway. He can't accept missions, but he's strong and smart and can read and write well, he's sure he can find something to do that he could get paid for.

None of this helps him with his immediate need.

He's found a place on the edge of the civilian district, which sells a lot of flashy, novelty items. It isn't often frequented by shinobi, because the quality is lacking in comparison, and fancy scrollwork doesn't do shit if the kunai shatters.

But it does mean that it is owned, staffed, and almost exclusively frequented by civilians.

Kakashi plans for two days. He practices hiding his chakra, and maintaining a henge, and a simple genjutsu.

In the end it's almost laughably easy.

He steals a tanto, and promises himself and the owner that he'll pay him back one day.

* * *

Gai is obsessed with passing the graduation exam this time around, and it's easy enough to convince him to spend their time training instead of bothering Hizashi and just rambling around the village wasting time.

If sensei isn't home, Kakashi trains in the mornings, too, so sometimes he's kind of tired.

"I'm so sorry!" Gai shouts, when Kakashi is a little too slow in a spar.

"It's not broken," Kakashi assures him, leaning forward so he doesn't get blood on his shirt. "Just a bloody nose."

"I can't believe you didn't block that! I really am getting better!"

Kakashi looks guiltily away.

* * *

Kakashi has trouble remembering the Hatake kenjutsu, and there's no one left alive who can teach him.

He goes into his stance, takes a step. That's not right.

He tries the other direction. Not that either.

Maybe this is when he's supposed to do the kick?

His right ankle, which he bruised on the training post yesterday, twists, and he falls on his butt in the dirt.

"Shinobi don't cry," he reminds himself, dashing away frustrated tears and getting back on his feet.

* * *

"Did you have a nightmare?" sensei asks.

Kakashi freezes, clean pajamas slung over his shoulder. Caught. "Yeah. I thought you were still working."

Sensei yawns. "I just got back. Sorry I haven't been around much. Hang on a minute and I'll come with you."

"You should sleep," Kakashi says. "You've been working really hard. Besides, I'm getting old enough to bathe by myself, don't you think?"

"Oh. I guess."

Kakashi pretends not to notice his hurt look.

* * *

"You look kind of tired," Gai says.

"I haven't been sleeping well," Kakashi says.

"I meant like your form."

Kakashi must really be slipping if Gai is noticing something. "Not really."

"That was sloppy. You're never sloppy."

"I make mistakes, too," Kakashi says crossly. "No one's perfect."

Gai doesn't look convinced. "Maybe we should just go to the river today. We could go swimming. It would be fun."

"I thought you wanted to be a ninja?"

"Yeah, I… I guess."

* * *

"I haven't seen Pakkun in a while," sensei says.

"He's really busy. You know how summons are."

"Well, I don't like thinking of you here by yourself all day."

"I'm keeping busy."

* * *

Kakashi thinks he's pieced together the entire kata. At least it seems balanced, and anyway there's nothing to compare it to so there's no way the examiners would know if he's got it wrong.

Time to incorporate the most important part.

Gathering lightning in his sword is entirely too much like gathering lightning in his hand, and he has to shake his head a few times to clear it. And then the cheap metal doesn't want to hold the charge.

His father's tanto was a family heirloom, specially designed for the enormous chakra load it was regularly forced to bear.

This is what Kakashi has, so it will have to do.

He tries again.

It explodes.

* * *

Kakashi wakes up when he hears Gai calling his name.

He groans.

"Kakashi, where are—Kakashi! Are you alright?"

"Fine," Kakashi says, or tries to. It comes out more like "nngh."

Gai runs to his side. "What happened? Why are you lying there? Are you okay? Say something!"

"'m f'n," Kakashi manages. One of his hands twitches.

Gai helps him to sit up. "You never showed up this afternoon, so I came looking for you! What were you doing?"

Kakashi moves his jaw around a few times. "Nothing," he says.

"Doesn't look like nothing," Gai says.

"Just trying out a new jutsu," Kakashi says. "It didn't really work."

"Well why were you messing around with a jutsu way out here then? My dad's looking for us." Gai frowns. "How long have you been out here? Did you knock yourself unconscious?"

"Maybe for a second." Kakashi says. Probably more like a few hours. "I lost track of time. Sorry."

"You're never late," Gai says.

Kakashi huffs out a quiet laugh at the irony as he struggles to his feet. He scowls at the twisted remains of the cheap tanto. Well, that didn't work.

"You're on fire!" Gai shouts, tackling Kakashi to the ground and undoing all his hard work.

Kakashi groans as he gets an elbow in the solar plexus. "Ow."

"Fire!" Gai insists, dramatically beating at his sleeve.

"I'm not on fire," Kakashi says. "It's just charred a little. It's barely smoking."

Gai ignores him, pushing back his sleeve. He gasps.

Kakashi has to admit, he's a little impressed himself. There's a curious mark there, like a many-branched tree, starting at his hand and going almost all the way to his shoulder.

He flexes his hand, then his arm. It feels kind of… tingly, but it doesn't hurt, so it isn't a burn.

"Huh."

"This is very serious!" Gai shouts, right in his ear. "You have to go to the hospital!"

"No!" Kakashi grabs for Gai's hand, missing on his first try. "No. I'm fine. It doesn't hurt."

"But…"

"No hospital! You can't tell anyone! Promise!"

"Al-alright…"

Kakashi slowly calms down, and after a while his hand stops twitching. "So… we're supposed to be somewhere?"

"Right. Yeah."

* * *

Kakashi is very annoyed about the tanto. He's obviously going to have to find one of decent quality, which means ninja, which means it's going to be difficult if not impossible to steal.

"Hi, sensei," he says. "Are you making dinner tonight?"

Kakashi doesn't stand a chance.

He blinks and sensei is right in front of him, and he blinks again and the two halves of his shirt are fluttering to the floor.

Sensei has a face like a thundercloud.

It's really not that bad. Kakashi has a few bruises, nothing excessive, and he's almost sure that finger isn't actually broken, and yes, that weird mark from earlier does look very dramatic, but it can't actually be dangerous if it doesn't hurt, and…

"What have you been doing?!"


	4. Chapter 4

Warnings: Conversation about trauma, self-harm, and past child neglect

* * *

"Nothing," Kakashi says, which is a mistake.

"This is not nothing! You look like you've gone three rounds with an avalanche!"

Kakashi can't help but flinch a little at that.

"You are going to the hospital right now, and then we are talking about this!"

"Talking about what?" Kakashi shouts right back, surprising himself almost as much as he does sensei with the sudden volume. "It's time I started acting like a real ninja!"

"What does that even mean? You already are a ninja!"

"I'm not! I'm just sitting around wasting everyone's time when I should be protecting the village!"

Sensei isn't really a shouter either, and he doesn't look any less angry, but he does lower the volume a little. "I thought we already talked about this. Your only job right now is to focus on getting well."

"I've been doing that. I've been doing that for _years_. It's time to be done."

"It doesn't really work that way."

"Well now it does! I'm useless like this!"

"You're not-"

Kakashi is going to _make_ him see. "The village doesn't have time for useless ninja!"

"That doesn't-"

"I can still be worth something!"

"What?" Sensei looks confused, now, but Kakashi doesn't really notice.

"I couldn't stop Danzou, and I couldn't save otou-san, and I couldn't—stop it, we're fighting, why are you hugging me?" Kakashi tries to wriggle free, but with no success.

"Not stopping," sensei says into Kakashi's hair, still hugging him within an inch of his life.

It's kind of painful, even though Kakashi is 95% sure that rib isn't cracked, but there doesn't seem to be anything he can do about it at the moment.

"I'm taking you to the hospital now," sensei says, and picks him up like he's still a little kid. "We can talk about this in the morning."

Kakashi huffs, but he supposes he's not going to win this argument by shouting a lot. He just has to find the right words to explain.

* * *

They don't talk the next morning, because Kakashi stays in the hospital for three days.

"What is this?" the nurse asks, pointing to the weird mark.

"I think I might have electrocuted myself," Kakashi says. "A little."

Sensei forces himself not to shout again, and whatever he wants to say comes out as an angry growl.

Kakashi and the nurse both ignore him.

"How did that happen?" she asks.

"Um. I was trying out a jutsu and it kind of… exploded. A little."

Another, longer growl.

"Were you unconscious for any length of time? Maybe woke up, found yourself on the ground? Even a few seconds could be significant."

"Um. Well. Maybe a couple of…"

"Minutes?"

"…hours?"

Sensei has to step outside.

* * *

For the first time ever, Kakashi kind of wishes he was still in the hospital. He has no idea how he's going to convince sensei when none of his other efforts have had any effect whatsoever.

At least they don't seem to be shouting this time.

Sensei helps him settle on the couch—the rib was cracked, and sensei is fussing—and goes to Kakashi's room and gets his shuriken-patterned blanket to wrap around his shoulders, even though it isn't that cold.

"Do you want something to drink?"

"I'm fine."

"I'm going to make something to drink."

Kakashi sighs and gives up, letting sensei putter around and make snacks and two different kinds of drinks before he finally sits down on the couch.

"So," sensei says.

Kakashi braces himself.

"I'm very worried by what you said before."

"About the jutsu exploding?"

"No. Well, yes, I can't believe you didn't tell me you were unconscious in the woods for a whole afternoon, but we'll get to that later. I meant what you said about being useful."

"Right." Kakashi doesn't think this was a very contentious point, so there's no danger in owning up to it. "Not only am I not contributing to the village in any way, but I'm using up other village resources. Your time, Kushina's time, everyone's time when they held that hearing…"

"Just," sensei interrupts, "just, hold on a moment. Suppose that's true."

What 'suppose'?

"None of that matters. You don't have to be useful. It's not a requirement to live in this village, or this house."

"Sensei. I'm not a little kid. You don't have to pretend with me."

Sensei frowns. "Okay, let's try something else. Pretend I'm the kid. Explain it to me."

How can you explain something so fundamental? Kakashi sighs. Then he sighs again, because the sound suits his mood.

He thinks of years of back-to-back S-ranks, trying to help Konoha recover from the Kyuubi, being put back on the shelf when he couldn't fake his way through his medical check-ups convincingly enough.

He thinks of the years after that, with everyone from the Hokage on down turning to Sharingan no Kakashi, student of the Fourth, looking for a miracle.

He thinks of all the times he found the requisite miracle. And all the times he failed. And how the entirety of civilization depends on him making the right choices now.

But of course he can't say any of that.

"When otou-san first came back from That Mission," Kakashi says slowly, "everything was different. People came to the house and shouted at him, threw things, mostly trash. Because he was trash, they said. He couldn't go outside at all. People weren't quite as interested in me, but they still shouted, sometimes they threw rocks. Someone dumped a bucket of paint on me once."

He glances up at sensei, to see if he's listening. He is.

"But then he killed Danzou, and everything was okay again. It's the same for me. I made a big mess of things, but I'll do something important enough to make up for it." Kakashi turns the thought over in his mind. Does that make him sound like too much of a gloryhound? "Not to get famous or anything."

"Kakashi…"

"Everyone expects a lot from me," Kakashi interrupts. "You expect a lot from me. I know I'm still kind of in the making a mess part of that deal, and it may not seem like it now, but I'm not going to be a complete disappointment."

"Kakashi. Nothing you do; wait, that's not what I meant. Nothing _about you_ is a disappointment to me."

Uh huh. Like that time he broke some civilian kid's jaw, or snuck around and lied and stole things.

Except sensei doesn't know about that last bit.

"I stole something," Kakashi says. "A tanto. From a civilian merchant. And then I broke it."

"We'll pay them back," sensei says, dismissing that completely, because he is as contrary as a cat.

"I just confessed to a crime," Kakashi says.

"You're not going to distract me."

Kakashi gives up trying to argue.

"I didn't take you home with me because I thought you would be useful to the village, and certainly not because I thought you would be useful to me."

Kakashi doesn't scoff, but it's a close thing. "Well, why bother then?"

"We are obviously not communicating here." Sensei gets up from his chair, which is opposite the couch, and comes to sit next to Kakashi.

Kakashi suspects he's about to be hugged again, but instead sensei takes his face in his hands and turns him so they're just looking at each other, kind of uncomfortably close.

"I could never replace you, Kakashi," sensei says, very seriously. "Or forget about you or be disappointed in you or anything else that you might be thinking. You are like a son to me, and I love you. I will always love you."

Kakashi's mouth falls open. He has never been so surprised in his life.

Sensei just stays there, searching his face for a response and looking kind of sad and really happy at the same time.

The moment stretches until Kakashi feels like he has to say something, but all that emerges is a wordless sort of squeak.

And now comes the hug.

Kakashi isn't… he isn't _enough_ , not the way sensei means. People don't… they just don't. Not for Kakashi.

It's easier, somehow, to whisper into sensei's shirt, now that he doesn't have to look at his face.

"But your son," Kakashi says.

Kakashi can feel the vibration as sensei laughs quietly. "I wondered when my imaginary kid would make an appearance in this conversation."

But Kakashi is not deterred. "I can see why you'd want to, I don't know, practice. But you're not going to want me just… hanging around, forever. Taking up your space and your attention, distracting you from your real family."

Sensei gives him a gentle shake. "Silly, that's what I am trying to tell you. You _are_ my real family. If I do have a son— _another_ son—someday, all that will change is that you'll be a big brother. I won't ever love you any less."

"But," Kakashi says, "but you…" He doesn't even know what he wants to say. "No one's ever said that to me before."

"Which part?"

All of it. "All of it."

Sensei pulls back and frowns. "Even… no one's ever told you they love you?"

Kakashi considers this. It's not that he doubted that his father _did_ love him, it's just that he was never very demonstrative. Or vocal. Or around. And after that, well… "I don't think so."

Sensei crushes all the air out of him. "Then I'll tell you every day."

"I'm not going to forget," Kakashi gasps out.

"Doesn't matter."

Kakashi thinks he might owe Gaara an apology, even if it won't mean anything to him anymore. Even lightheaded from lack of oxygen, this is the most incredible feeling in the world.

"I had a talk with Jiraiya-sensei while you were in the hospital. He convinced one of the toad elders to reverse summon me to Mount Myoboku. That was certainly… interesting. But he told me why we have the rule against being both parent and sensei."

Kakashi is given a tiny but critical bit of slack so he can breathe properly.

"Basically that it's two totally incompatible ways of caring for someone. You'll just go mad if you try and love your students the way you do your children, and your children miss out on a very special bond if your primary interest is in helping them succeed as shinobi. There's more, but the details aren't important just now."

Sensei leans back a little so he can see Kakashi.

"He told me that he had to make that choice, and that he should have known that one day I would have to face it, too."

Kakashi is holding his breath.

"You can guess which way Jiraiya-sensei went. It's hard to imagine him as a parent, but I could see that it was a hard decision for him, even all these years later. And I think… I think I want to be your parent. I can't imagine ever living without this feeling, don't want to miss a second of it."

Kakashi's eyes are starting to hurt from the effort of not blinking.

"I'd never want to replace the memories of your family—"

"You wouldn't," Kakashi interrupts. "I mean, I understand, about that. And it's, you know, fine. If that's what you really want."

Kakashi doesn't think he's ever seen someone look so happy. He didn't know he was capable of inspiring such an emotion.

Kakashi wrinkles his nose. "Except… can I still call you sensei?" There has only ever been one 'sensei' in Kakashi's life, and that relationship has been so precious to him, even years after the man's death, and he can't imagine trying to change that.

"Of course. How are you feeling?"

Confused. Happy. Worried. Kind of overwhelmed. "I never thought."

"Never thought what?"

"Well, I mean, I've cared about people before, obviously. I just… never thought someone would care about me back. Like, the same way." That came out a lot more pathetic than he intended.

"Then just so there's no confusion: Kakashi, if you are the only student, or the only son, that I will ever have, I couldn't have asked for anyone better."

Kakashi starts to cry. He isn't sad, and it seems very important to tell sensei this, but the words don't come out in any sort of order, and he's not making a lot of sense.

"I know," sensei says, and lets him cry into his shirt.

* * *

"I hope you know," sensei says, much later, "that I'm quite upset about you hurting yourself and lying to me. I don't want you going anywhere without me for a week."

Kakashi sighs. "That's pretty much what I expected."

* * *

If Kushina is surprised when she comes back from her mission and sensei basically tackles her and starts crying into her hair, she doesn't show it.

"What did you do?" she asks Kakashi.

"Apparently I've been stealth-adopted," Kakashi says. "I just found out."

"Took you long enough," Kushina says, patting sensei's hair. "There, there; he's still here, so you couldn't have muffed it too badly."

Kakashi tries not to look too guilty.

"Oh, geez, what did you two do?"

* * *

Kakashi is tucked into bed at eight o'clock on the dot. He's not allowed to complain, on account of being grounded. He hates going to bed at eight, and he usually complains about being tucked in because he thinks he should, not because he really dislikes it that much.

But sensei has added a whole new layer to the embarrassment.

"Goodnight, Kakashi," he says, ruffling Kakashi's hair. "I love you, see you in the morning."

Kakashi tries to disappear inside his blankets.

"Oh, I didn't realize we had a new routine. Love you," Kushina says, in a totally matter-of-fact way.

Kakashi sort of whimpers and buries himself even deeper. Kind of a metaphor for the whole situation, really.

* * *

Kakashi knows he has some apologies to make, and he doesn't waste time making them.

"Sensei told me that you told him that I was hurt," Kakashi says.

Gai blushes over his whole face and stares at his feet. "Sorry."

"I wanted to say thank you," Kakashi says.

Gai looks up.

"I was a giant mess and in way over my head. I really needed help."

"But I broke my promise."

"I really needed help," Kakashi says again. "And you were the one who saw it, and got me help. You did exactly the right thing."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I said some stuff that I shouldn't have, and I was manipulating you. I'm sorry."

"Well, I'm sorry, too."

"Don't be; if I do something that stupid again, I hope you make the exact same call." Kakashi gently bumps his shoulder against Gai's. "You're already a splendid ninja."

Gai beams at him.

* * *

Late that night, when he's supposed to be asleep, Kakashi summons Pakkun.

"I did something stupid," Kakashi says.

"Well why didn't you talk to me about it," Pakkun says.

"I knew you would tell me I was being stupid."

"You're stupid," Pakkun says, and sticks his nose in Kakashi's ear.

Kakashi sighs.

* * *

Over the next few months, Kakashi keeps his head down. He and Gai review for the graduation exam, he trains under sensei's close supervision, and he doesn't beat up any more civilian kids.

Less than a week before Gai is due to take the exam again—and he'll definitely pass this time, Kakashi is sure of it—sensei comes home before dinner highly agitated.

Kakashi freezes, wondering who has died, if the village is under attack, if Madara has returned early. He reminds himself how unlikely the latter is, that he would have heard about it from somewhere else if it were the second, and that he shouldn't automatically assume the worst. He tells himself this until he feels calmer.

He has the whole process down to under a minute, which he thinks is as good as its going to get.

Sensei is so busy fluttering around that he doesn't even notice.

"Team assignments!" he wails, collapsing dramatically onto the couch.

Kakashi rolls his eyes. "Make sense," he orders.

Kushina snickers from the kitchen, and picks up the phone to order something for dinner. Sensei is obviously going to be distracted for some time.

"I have one!" sensei says, waving a scroll around. "They rejected my request for Kakashi but they granted the other two and now I have a team!"

"You already knew this," Kakashi says. "Orochimaru told you that."

Sensei turns to meet his eyes, which is sort of weird because he's hanging off the back of the couch.

The frown looks even weirder.

"You knew I forgot," sensei says. "This is all part of your nefarious plan to convince me to take these two on as students, isn't it."

"You'll like Obito," Kakashi says. He narrows his eyes. "You like him already, and you just don't want to admit it."

Sensei looks shifty. "I don't want to take sides."

"There are no sides. I took insult where none was meant, used excessive force, and embarrassed him in front of his entire class. I was totally in the wrong in every way." Kakashi waves his hand impatiently before sensei can say anything. "Yes, yes, I know why I overreacted and it was totally understandable and no I don't want to talk about it _again_."

Sensei looks like he's going to launch into his speech anyway.

"I'm just saying, there are no sides. I don't care if you like Obito." Kakashi shuffles his feet a little. "I mean, so long as you still like me, too."

"Always," sensei says. "Come over here so I can hug you."

"Stop being lazy and get up yourself," Kakashi says, but he allows himself to be hugged anyway, or at least awkwardly crushed against the back of the couch.

"Food's here!" Kushina shouts.

"It is unbelievable to me how fast Ichiraku's delivers," sensei says.

"Well we are their favorite customers," Kakashi says.

They sit down to eat, and for a while the only sound is the slurping of noodles.

"So who's the third person?" Kakashi asks.

Sensei scowls at his chopsticks. "They aren't sure. The number of kids they expect to graduate isn't divisible by three, so they're adopting a wait and see attitude. Can you believe they asked me if I had any ideas? Like, for example, a genin student of my own with no team yet?"

"I'm sure they felt very stupid after they said it," Kushina says soothingly.

"Ha. You bet they did."

"What about Gai?" Kakashi asks.

"But then who will be on your team?"

Kakashi blinks. "My team?"

Sensei frowns at him. "You're still planning to just stay on medical leave indefinitely?"

"Well, I hadn't really thought about it," Kakashi says.

"You've certainly devoted enough time to everyone else's future," Kushina notes.

"But Gai is such a good friend," Kakashi says.

Sensei is giving him a weird look. "Riiiight?"

"I think Obito would really benefit from having such a good friend."

Sensei sighs. "He seems to be pretty close with Rin, and he'll have gone to school with whoever it is for years so it's not like they'll be strangers." He pauses. "It's interesting that you've barely tried to convince me about having her on the team."

"She's near the top of her class in every area, has excellent chakra control, and is a kind person with a strong sense of teamwork," Kakashi says. "What more is there to say? And anyway, you picked me, so I assumed you would be more interested in Obito the Walking Disaster."

Sensei blinks, then laughs. "He is a klutz, isn't he? And you would not believe the ridiculous shenanigans he gets up to."

Oh, he would believe it. Sensei has obviously taken to Obito, as Kakashi knew he would, and it's impossible not to like Rin so there's no danger there.

Sensei cheerfully starts regaling Kushina with a typical Obito story, which involves a lot of sincere offers of help with the best of intentions followed by tardiness, mess and sheepish apologies.

Kakashi sternly reminds himself not to be jealous or insecure. It's not like he can just have sensei all to himself for the rest of their lives. That's not the kind of person either of them are.

And he doesn't even have him all to himself now, because there's Kushina, and Jiraiya, and sort-of Orochimaru in a really weird, antagonistic way.

"So Gai," Kakashi says.

Sensei groans and rests his head in his hands.

* * *

Sensei and Dai both have taken time off from work to train with Gai and Kakashi. Mainly Gai, of course, because it's a thinly-veiled attempt at getting him through the exam this time, but Kakashi is happy to play along with the idea that it's for both of their benefits.

It does mean that the four of them, plus Kushina when she's around, have dinner together a lot that week.

"Your sensei tells me that you might be part of the team selection this round!" Gai enthuses. "Perhaps we'll be put on a team together!"

Kakashi gives sensei a dirty look over Gai's shoulder.

"That was cheating," he says, after Gai and his father have left.

"I don't think so," sensei says. "You two are good for each other."

Kakashi isn't sure what he brings to the relationship, but he can't deny that he would be completely lost without Gai. "Meh."

Kushina ruffles Kakashi's hair. "Is that Kakashi-speak for 'you're totally right, sensei, why didn't I give up this argument ages ago'?"

Kakashi bats at her hand. "No."

"Seriously," sensei says. "I'm glad that you and Gai are such close friends. It always amazes me how you see people. You're already one of the strongest ninja of your generation, and look at who you spend your time with. There's Gai, who didn't graduate on his first try, and Hizashi, a mediocre, career genin, and now this Obito, securely at the bottom of his class." Sensei frowns. "And Anko."

"Anko is the exception to a lot of rules," Kakashi says. He has no idea how to deal with the rest of that pronouncement. Kakashi is hardly the best of anything at the moment, and isn't likely to be, and he isn't seeing anything in others that isn't obvious.

"She certainly is."

"Well hey, what about Hizashi then," Kakashi says. "He could be the other member of your team."

"He's already a genin, and he already has a job of his own," sensei reminds him. "And isn't he seventeen?"

"Sixteen," Kakashi says, warming to the idea the more he thinks about it. "He has this idea that branch family members are destined to live their lives in cages, never seeking the sky—he's kind of dramatic, you get used to it—so he just sort of trundles along wherever someone tells him to go. I'll bet he just needs someone to believe in him."

"Kakashi, no."

"I think it's a great idea," Kushina says.

Sensei gives her a look of deep betrayal. "I don't know why you think I need all the village's problem children, but I don't."

Kakashi and Kushina give him identical, skeptical looks.

Sensei throws up his hands. "He isn't part of the team rotation anymore, so he would have to agree to it, and I really don't see that happening."

* * *

"He didn't go for it," sensei says the next day.

"Don't worry, I'll talk to him," Kakashi says.

Sensei pauses, then gives him a deeply suspicious look. "Maybe I should go with you."

Like that's going to stop him.

Hizashi doesn't look surprised when Kakashi marches into his cubicle, and has the foresight to lead him and sensei to an empty conference room where none of his colleagues can overhear.

Kakashi isn't very good at these inspirational speeches. Naruto would know exactly what to say.

"You should join a team and try for chuunin again," Kakashi says.

Hizashi gives him a mulish look, the resemblance to his son suddenly clearer than it's ever been, and doesn't budge. "Why?"

"Why not?" Kakashi says, which okay, not his best argument ever.

Hizashi does not look impressed.

Kakashi puts his hands on his hips, because he secretly finds it very intimidating whenever Kushina does that, and does his best imitation of Naruto's resolve face. "Sometimes your life is shit," he says. "And you just have to suck it up and deal."

Sensei groans.

Hizashi is not intimidated. "They're four years younger than I am. Why would I want to hang around with a bunch of kids?"

"Well then I guess you'll be the leader," Kakashi says. Kakashi is certain that Hizashi has never gone anywhere near a leadership role in his life. "I'm sure you'd be a natural at it."

His frown is slightly thoughtful now. Time to press.

"My sensei is the best in the village," Kakashi says. "And he is here, basically begging you to leave a job you hate and be his student. If you keep whining about how you're destined for nothing special and all that, you're just a liar. You don't have to prove yourself, or beg, or do anything except get out of your own way."

"I suppose," Hizashi says doubtfully.

It's a start. "I'll be back," Kakashi warns.

"I should just concede gracefully, shouldn't I," Hizashi says, resigned.

* * *

"I'm going to get you back for this," sensei says, now that Hizashi's agreement is secured. "This team is going to be a disaster."

Kakashi thinks they're going to be amazing. Sensei can pull it off.

"The team selection committee have started agreeing to everything I ask for when they see me coming."

Which is as it should be. Sensei is a hundred times more competent than the lot of them put together.

* * *

Now that sensei has planted the idea of Kakashi and Gai being teammates in Gai's head, Kakashi supposes he should actually try and get himself into the team rotation.

"You don't have to do this if you don't feel ready," sensei says. "Don't let me, or Gai, pressure you into something you don't want to do."

"I guess I don't my career to be over already," Kakashi says. "And there's no one I'd rather have as a teammate."

Sensei doesn't seem happy with this lackluster response, but Kakashi doesn't know what to tell him. The last time he actually, legitimately passed a psych eval was before he went into ANBU. After sensei's death—

Kakashi flinches.

After the Yondaime Hokage's death, ANBU was a mess, and psych evals were conveniently lost, or appointments mysteriously always scheduled during missions, if there was any chance the subject wouldn't be cleared for active duty.

Kakashi was far from the only one who benefited from—or fell victim to, depending on your point of view—the unofficial policy.

And after he got out of ANBU, they patched him together until he was more or less functional, and as long as he kept pulling miracles out of thin air they helped him cobble together strategies to keep himself under control, and he had to go to therapy three times a week if he was in the village.

That's not going to cut it here. He has to actually convince a real person that he is a responsible, well-adjusted adult.

He doesn't have sensei's faith that this is going to turn out well.

* * *

No one is more surprised than Kakashi when his registration card comes back stamped 'Active'.

"But," he says.

"You've been doing really well," sensei says.

"Obito?" Kakashi has been reduced to one-word sentences.

"Your therapist thought that was a good sign, actually. Not that I'm condoning it, but we've both noticed that you have a tendency to internalize any upset, and it's good that you tried to stand up for yourself instead of just wallowing in self-destructive impulses. Even if that wasn't the best way of standing up for yourself."

Kakashi gives him an incredulous look.

"Okay, yes, after that you did, er—"

"Wallow in self-destructive impulses," Kakashi supplies, finding his voice.

"Yes, well, we had a couple of very important talks after that, got a lot of issues out in the open that had obviously been festering for a long time, and the net outcome of that incident was positive." Sensei frowns. "Though—"

"I know, I know, you're still upset that I was hurting myself and would prefer I didn't do it again," Kakashi says. He's heard this approximately a thousand times, and in retrospect, now that he's in a much more rational frame of mind, he was acting like an idiot. If he really wants to become the kind of student people would be talking about for years, he can't rush his training like that.

Well, they'll certainly talk if he gets himself killed in some spectacular and embarrassing way, but that isn't exactly what he's going for.

Sensei stares him down, like he's searching for any signs of said self-destructive impulses, but eventually lets it go. "Well. Congratulations. I'll enter you into the rotation this round. And I'll put in a request for you and Gai to be put on the same team. I think Dai has already asked for you, so there's a good chance you'll be together."

"Okay," Kakashi says. He's starting to think that he was the one who understands team selection better than sensei does. It might nominally be up to the committee, but sensei has gotten everyone he wanted except for Kakashi, and there was actually a rule specifically prohibiting that.

"This will throw off their numbers again. I can't wait," sensei says, with kind of an evil smile.

* * *

Kakashi has to actually go to the Academy the day teams are assigned, which he's not sure he appreciates.

Scratch that, he definitely is not happy about it, at all.

The consensus among the students in general is that Kakashi is a badass ninja live from their textbook, and Obito was never that popular anyway, so they're all excited about the fight and assure Kakashi they're on his side.

Idiots.

Someone vacates their seat so Kakashi can sit next to Gai, and he doesn't speak to or acknowledge anyone else. He and Obito are on opposite sides of the room, which is really the best for everyone.

Kakashi has pretty much resigned himself to being treated like a kid all the time. The advantages—his friends and family alive, his village standing, the time to deal with all the drama of his life—outweigh the disadvantages, in his opinion.

Most of the time.

Having to sit in a classroom, surrounded by his 'peers', he feels his real age acutely. Gai was always kind of… unique… and their relationship isn't actually that different, except Kakashi is maybe a little less obviously dependent on him. Though he's not entirely sure that's true.

Sensei and Kushina don't really treat him as an adult, always reading with him and feeding him and bathing him and chasing him off to bed at a ridiculous hour, but they never talk down to him, and they respect his opinions and judgment. When he isn't being completely irrational.

But _this_ …

He hates adolescents, he really, really does.

Finally the Academy sensei walks in with the list of team assignments, and the whole room goes completely silent.

The man gives Kakashi an unexpectedly aggressive look, which is a little alarming. Maybe he's worried Kakashi will attack someone again.

He proceeds to totally ignore him after that, though, so apparently it's fine.

One team after another is formed, and the students cheer or moan in despair, according to their inclinations. Kakashi doesn't know most of them and doesn't care.

His breath starts coming a little fast as the numbers climb higher, but Rin, Obito and Hizashi become Team Eight, not Team Seven, and the relief is so acute that he almost slides out of his chair when all the tension rushes out of him. He hadn't even realized he was worried about that.

"Did you want to be on that team?" Gai whispers, loud enough for half the room to hear.

"Nope," Kakashi says. "I'm just happy for Hizashi."

Hizashi had slipped in at the last minute and lurked in the back by the door. The Academy sensei squinted at his name a few times before reading it off like a man who does not believe what he is seeing.

Whatever. Genin who fail the chuunin exams _usually_ join an older team gearing up to take the exams in the next round, but it isn't required. Kakashi and sensei both checked.

More teams are made, more students leave, claimed by their new jounin-sensei.

One of them is a man whose life Kakashi's father saved on That Mission.

He won't meet Kakashi's eye.

Kakashi doesn't look away from him until he skulks out of the room.

"Who was that?" Gai asks.

"No one," Kakashi says, so forcefully that Gai lets the subject drop.

And then they find themselves, quite unexpectedly, the only two people left besides the Academy sensei.

"Are you going to be our sensei?" Kakashi asks, as the man packs up his things.

"No," he says. "Never again. Not ever. Not if the fate of the whole village depended on it." He slings his bag over his shoulder and leaves.

Kakashi and Gai look at each other.

"Don't worry," Kakashi says. "Jounin are kind of eccentric. I'm sure they'll be here eventually."

Kakashi has to resist the bizarre impulse to put an eraser over the door.

They wait a long time, and Gai starts doing squats out of sheer boredom. Kakashi doesn't complain, because he isn't that hypocritical.

Finally, there's some kind of commotion out in the hall, and the door slides open.

It's Orochimaru, with Anko peering around his legs.

He looks murderous. "Oh no," he says, and storms right back out.


	5. Chapter 5

"Sweet, sweet revenge," sensei says.

Kakashi rolls his eyes.

Orochimaru yelled at the team selection committee. He yelled at the school board. He even yelled at the Hokage. According to Kushina, it was epic.

Jiraiya, reportedly, pulled a muscle he was laughing so hard.

Kakashi could have predicted the outcome of Orochimaru's protests; once they've decided to give you a team, you get a team. He's actually feeling rather sympathetic. After all, he's been there.

But it has given him the opportunity to decide how he feels about this team assignment. Sometimes he still wakes up in the middle of the night, remembering Sasuke leaving the village, Sasuke dying, Jiraiya crying into his sake, all because of Orochimaru.

But none of those things haven't happened yet, and Kakashi has not _personally_ gone up against Orochimaru in battle, not counting that time during the chuunin exams standing over Sasuke where Orochimaru laughed at him and wandered off—actually, didn't that happen twice? Once in each timeline?

Kakashi can't be certain; his memory of that first trip through time is a little… hazy. Also, it doesn't matter. His years of stalking have shown him that Orochimaru is not necessarily an evil person. It's more that he's aggressively morally neutral, and easily swayed by whoever is closest to him.

So all things considered, Kakashi being his student and able to keep an eye on him _every day_ is the best possible outcome for everyone.

He has plenty of time to come to this realization, because Orochimaru fights his team assignment for three full days. Kakashi is kind of impressed; he never lasted more than six hours one-on-one with the Sandaime Hokage.

"It's not a reflection on you," sensei says, like Kakashi might possibly be offended by Orochimaru's dramatics.

Kakashi shrugs. "I know that. Tell me about the bell test again."

"Well, Obito was sure he could wear me out if he just kept trying, so—"

Yeah, it's better this way, Kakashi thinks, letting sensei's words wash over him. He can help Obito and Rin by loaning them sensei, but he doesn't actually have to interact with them directly.

Though it does mean he wasted his time working up to being able to interact with them, which is rather annoying.

"I was thinking about having a team dinner," sensei says.

"Oh. Okay. I can find somewhere else to be for a few hours."

Sensei glares at him. "You will not. You and Obito are both ninja of this village, and you can coexist peacefully for one dinner. And this is your home, no one's going to kick you out of it."

Kakashi sighs. Perhaps not wasted after all.

* * *

"Congratulations," Orochimaru snarls. He's holding registration forms like he's considering the most efficient way to kill with them. "You're a team."

Gai looks kind of alarmed. Kakashi had forgotten that he's intimidated by Orochimaru.

Anko is giving her new teammates a very dubious look, which Kakashi doesn't think is very flattering. Or fair.

Orochimaru seems to be at a loss for what to do now. Or he just doesn't care, and hopes they'll get bored and go away.

Kakashi sighs. He has to do everything around here. "Good morning, Orochimaru-sensei."

Orochimaru eyes him suspiciously. "Did you fall on your head this morning?"

"I thought we could introduce ourselves," Kakashi says, with aggressive cheerfulness. He tries out a smile.

"There's nothing I don't already know about you that I care to," Orochimaru says.

"Yeah!" Anko says, sticking her tongue out at him.

Kakashi huffs and swings his legs. They're on the roof of the Hokage Tower, where Orochimaru finally had to concede the battle. "If you want us to make chuunin quickly, you're going about it in a very inefficient manner."

Orochimaru narrows his eyes. Kakashi can almost hear his thoughts churning.

"Chuunin?" Gai asks, hopeful.

"Yes," Orochimaru says. "There hasn't been a rookie team that all made chuunin on their first try since the Sannin. You are about to match that record." He looks them each in the eye. " _Or else_."

Gai appreciates a challenge, to what is probably an unhealthy degree. He immediately perks up at this.

Orochimaru huffs. "So. I already know what Anko can do. Hatake, you summoned when you were still in the single digits and haven't done anything worth mentioning since then." He looks at Gai. "What do you do?"

"Taijutsu!" Gai announces, at his usual volume. "I'm going to be the world's greatest taijutsu master! I'll protect my teammates and my village!"

Kakashi can see the exact moment Orochimaru mentally slots Gai into a category labelled 'Jiraiya'.

"You're kind of strange," Anko says.

Gai looks like he's deciding whether to take offense.

She grins. "I like it."

He grins back, and Kakashi and Orochimaru just watch them grin at each other for a bit.

"I assume you already know each other's names," Orochimaru says eventually. "The next step is to divide you up into roles."

That was quick. Not that Kakashi expected Orochimaru would be interested in getting to know them on a personal level, but team roles is usually a chuunin-level thing. Most genin fresh out of the Academy don't have a particular specialty.

Then again, they're hardly a typical team.

"What, like each of us does genjutsu, ninjutsu, or taijutsu?" Anko asks.

"I want taijutsu," Gai says.

Orochimaru sighs. "No. Every ninja develops an arsenal of different types of jutsu according to their particular talents or tastes. A team role is something different. A successful team is well-balanced, all the major shinobi skills covered by one member of the team."

Kakashi snorts. Or they're just so ridiculously over-powered that they run roughshod over everyone else.

"Question, Hatake?" Orochimaru asks.

"No. Just wondering how _your_ genin team divided up team roles," Kakashi says.

Orochimaru narrows his eyes, then nods, acknowledging the point. "Of course, not all teams are exactly the same. But they each have certain principles in common. Someone is the primary damage dealer—and recipient—someone locates the enemy and gathers intel, someone finishes the enemy off while they're distracted, that sort of thing. They aren't necessarily established roles, but every essential function must be covered. And, of course, any well-balanced team needs an exceptional medic."

Interesting. The medic thing wasn't standard in Konoha until Tsunade became Hokage, but as her teammate, Orochimaru has probably heard all her arguments. And knowing Tsunade, he heard them many times.

Orochimaru sits back, tucking his hands into his vest. "Two of you are already genin, anyway, and I'm told I can't fail the other one just to get out of having a team. So we're not going to bother with the surprise test nonsense. I will see all three of you in Practice Field Eleven, promptly at nine o'clock tomorrow morning. If you're late, you fail. Dismissed."

"What surprise test?" Anko asks.

"Where's Practice Field Eleven?" Gai asks.

Kakashi hadn't quite been able to imagine Orochimaru administering the bell test, but he still has to admit to some disappointment at him not even trying.

* * *

Kakashi and Gai arrive at Practice Field Eleven at the crack of dawn.

No, really. The sun has barely edged the horizon.

"Are we late?" Gai asks, jumping from foot to foot in agitation.

Kakashi yawns. "If you need me, I'll be napping."

He manages to sleep through Gai fidgeting, because the next thing he knows Gai is shaking him awake and Orochimaru and Anko are arriving.

Orochimaru looks disappointed that they managed to find their way here.

"So," Orochimaru says. "Show me what you can do."

Whatever else you might say about him, Orochimaru is thorough.

They demonstrate every type of punch and kick taught at the Academy on the wood posts. Orochimaru shows them a few new ones and they try those, too. They run through the katas. They practice takedowns. They spar with each other, taijutsu only. They spar with Orochimaru. Very briefly. Then they start the whole thing over again with weapons.

"Hmm," Orochimaru says.

Then they switch to genjutsu. Kakashi has pretty much forgotten all his genjutsu, except a few that use the Sharingan and are therefore totally useless to him, and Gai has never really grasped the concept. So mostly Anko casts a number of very creative and very nasty genjutsu on the two of them and they try to break free.

Kakashi is quite out of practice with this—again, because of the Sharingan—and gets caught by a nauseating genjutsu that makes it seem like the ground is up.

Gai does very well. He's such a grounded person that genjutsu seems to just brush off him.

Fortunately, they don't have to experience Orochimaru's idea of a disturbing genjutsu.

Then they practice ninjutsu. Gai taps out fairly quickly, because he doesn't know anything but the standard three from the Academy. Kakashi reminds him that that's normal, and he has the misfortune of being on a team with two people who are already genin.

Anko knows a few tricks, but Kakashi has the dubious pleasure of getting Orochimaru's full attention for what feels like forever, summoning his pack together and individually, then shooting fireballs and calling lightning and ducking under the earth and creating water dragons and almost performing a Rasengan before remembering he's not supposed to know about that until he's starting to get light-headed.

"That was so cool," Gai whispers.

Then Anko mixes up a poison from stuff she finds around the training area and tries to hit her new teammates with it, using senbon and traps and, once, drinking some and spitting it at them.

"Ha!" she crows through numb lips, because she gets Gai with that one.

Then they have a series of what Orochimaru calls 'practical exercises'. They have to find him in the woods. They have to fight off a snake summon (not Manda, fortunately). They have to steal a specially marked kunai off Orochimaru.

Finally, when the sun is starting to set again and Kakashi can't feel any part of his body, Orochimaru calls a halt.

At least Kakashi isn't the only one who collapses on the grass.

Orochimaru frowns at them all for a good minute before he delivers his assessment. "Anko, you are obviously best suited a high damage stealth role. Develop your genjutsu further and rely on your teammates for distractions. And don't neglect your poisons studies." He pauses. "And you will soon be ready for a summoning contract."

She beams.

Orochimaru turns to Gai. "You." He frowns. "You're durable, I suppose."

Gai is uncertain how to take that.

"He's going to be amazing at taijutsu," Kakashi volunteers, because Gai's potential is maybe not completely obvious at this point. "A total powerhouse."

"You think he should be the first point of contact," Orochimaru says. "Interesting."

"I'll fight anyone," Gai says.

Orochimaru ignores that. "And then there's Hatake. Tell me, is there anything you aren't good at?"

"Lots of things," Kakashi says. Orochimaru doesn't look impressed. "But I'm okay at most things," he allows.

"Hmm."

Kakashi tries not to fidget.

"With your proficiency with ninjutsu, I would have put you as the, hmm, 'powerhouse', as you put it. But your green friend is obviously unsuited for any other role, and you. You are a skilled tracker. You are creative and adaptable. You are a natural leader."

Orochimaru stares at him some more.

"Okay?" Kakashi says.

"Tell me, have you considered studying medical ninjutsu?"

Kakashi's mouth falls open. "Me? No!"

Orochimaru frowns at him. "I assure you, the medic is the most important member of the team. I suppose I could take on that role; there was never a need, on my own team, but I have some training."

Yeah. In taking people apart, not putting them together. "Uh," Kakashi says. He looks at Anko. He looks at Gai. "I guess you'll have to."

Orochimaru raises an eyebrow. "A ringing endorsement, I'm sure. Tell me, what is your objection to medical training?"

"Oh, I can't," Kakashi says. "I don't have the chakra control."

Both eyebrows go up. "Really."

"Yeah, I have a problem…" Kakashi trails off. Does he have a problem? It was such an automatic response, but here, now, without the Sharingan, is his chakra still messed up?

"I see," Orochimaru says flatly. "That will be all for today. I will have training schedules prepared for you tomorrow, which you will follow to the letter. Is that understood?"

Only Gai manages to summon up any enthusiasm for his reply.

Orochimaru seems oddly satisfied by that. "Good. Dismissed."

* * *

Kakashi limps home, where sensei snatches him up and fusses over him and makes him take two baths.

Kushina is smiling and shaking her head in the background, but she also has food waiting for him when he finally gets out.

"What did he do?" sensei asks, while Kakashi wearily forces himself to eat. "Are you over-training again? I'll talk to him."

"Please don't," Kakashi says. "He was just testing us today. I'm sure it will get better."

Sensei is giving him a very judgmental look.

That's hardly warranted. Kakashi knows what a healthy amount of training entails.

Though arguably he has not demonstrated that to sensei.

"It's fine," Kakashi insists.

A knock at the door rescues him from having to argue his case further.

It's Orochimaru.

Kakashi kind of droops in his chair. He doesn't want to admit it, but he's about at his limit for the day. He _could_ keep fighting, but he'd really rather not.

"Namikaze," Orochimaru says.

"Do you think you're working them too hard?" sensei asks, barely civilly.

Kakashi sinks a little lower.

Orochimaru studies sensei's face carefully. "No."

"But-"

"You are not his sensei, and I am not his nanny. I will concern myself with his training, and you will confine your worry to everything else."

Sensei grits his teeth. "So nice to see you. Won't you come in?"

Orochimaru glides into the room and nods to Kushina.

No one says anything for a bit.

"Was there a problem at training?" sensei asks finally.

"I'd like to arrange a chakra test," Orochimaru says.

"What, for Kakashi?"

"Obviously. If you want to get your own chakra tested, that's your business."

"What happened? Did you notice a problem?"

Orochimaru gives him a flat look.

Sensei sighs. "Kakashi is my… mine. If you've seen something, it's my business to know."

"I don't know if there's a problem," Orochimaru says slowly, like he's speaking to an idiot child. "That's why I suggested a test."

They could go on like this all night, so Kakashi decides to interrupt. "My fault," he says.

They both turn to look at him, and Kakashi realizes he doesn't know how he's going to follow up on that. He was sort of hoping Orochimaru would just forget he said anything.

"I thought I was having a problem with my chakra," Kakashi says. "But it turns out I was just imagining things. So, it was fine."

Orochimaru huffs and crosses his arms. "You have some of the best chakra control I have ever seen. That's why you graduated at such a ludicrously young age, why you keep up with genin twice your age and size, why you managed to summon that dog when it should have been impossible. If you 'imagined' a problem, it's worth investigating."

"You didn't mention this," sensei says, glaring at Kakashi.

"Because it was nothing!"

"I'll make an appointment—"

"I'll do it," Orochimaru interrupts.

"You? But—"

"I'm fully qualified."

"But you hate—"

"Tomorrow morning at eight. My lab."

"But—"

Orochimaru leaves.

Sensei stares at the closed door for a long minute. "Sometimes," he says, "I really dislike that man."

* * *

Sensei insists on going with him. It's pretty embarrassing, especially since Orochimaru is Kakashi's jounin-sensei now and they're going to spend loads of time together.

Naturally, sensei interprets Kakashi's irritation as concern.

"Don't worry, Orochimaru isn't so bad," sensei says.

Kakashi rolls his eyes.

"It's not like he'll eat you or anything. Probably."

"I'm pretty sure it's his snake summon who eats people," Kakashi says. "And it would eat you first, you're bigger."

Sensei gives him a funny look. "I was kidding. I don't seriously think we're in danger of being eaten."

Kakashi doesn't, either. Not really. It's just that he has a healthy respect for the circumstances. Walking into Orochimaru's labs. On purpose. As they approach, the door creaks open on its own.

Despite himself, Kakashi maybe kind of clings to sensei's arm a little.

He's actually been to this lab before, in this time. Well, he's lurked outside of it, and once he crawled around in the vents. He didn't see anything too incriminating. But he hasn't been inside the lab proper.

It looks pretty much like a normal lab, like something Tsunade or Sakura would use, and not the horror show he found Tenzou in. That's something.

And Kakashi's been watching Orochimaru carefully, and so has sensei, and there aren't even any dead bodies in here, let alone mokuton research or curse seal experiments or… or anything else.

"Come sit over here," Orochimaru says.

He's wearing a lab coat, which doesn't really look like his Oto uniform, but Kakashi has grown accustomed to seeing him in a certain light, and this is bringing up unpleasant memories. He tries to be a little less obvious about hiding behind sensei, because he desperately wants to keep doing it, and he doesn't want either of these two men to realize that.

Orochimaru turns, and he's wearing glasses. That's new.

It's also… humanizing. Something to focus on.

So Kakashi steps out from behind sensei and clambers a little awkwardly onto one of the beds. He's so looking forward to being tall again.

It mostly looks like a bed you might find in the hospital, which does have negative associations but not necessarily dangerous ones, though Kakashi is less certain about the obvious drain in the floor.

Sensei is hovering, and Kakashi reminds himself that one of them has to be reasonable here, so he takes off his shirt when asked and doesn't complain when Orochimaru sticks a bunch of wires to his skin.

None of them go _under_ his skin, so Kakashi's going to tentatively call that a good sign.

"First I need to establish a baseline," Orochimaru says. "Don't do anything with your chakra until I tell you to."

Kakashi rolls his eyes. It's been _years_ since he tried to use his chakra to compensate for his physical weakness.

"Can you channel chakra to your hands only?"

Kakashi gives him an annoyed look. "Of course."

"Then do so."

He has to call chakra to his hands, then his feet, then each of his chakra centers. Babies could do this.

And then Orochimaru starts removing the wires.

"What, that's it?"

"That part's done. There's another part with seals." He frowns at Kakashi over his glasses. "Not what you were expecting?"

"Um," Kakashi says.

Sensei frowns, too. It's very disconcerting to see them with matching expressions. "Have you had your chakra tested before?"

"Yes?" It sounds too much like a question. His father must have had his chakra tested, Kakashi is sure that he would have, even if he doesn't remember it. "Yes."

"Is this why you were so nervous about coming to the lab?" sensei asks.

"I wasn't nervous," Kakashi says, which was a stupid thing to say.

Orochimaru taps his pen against the table. "You haven't been in my lab," he says, sounding very sure. "Except as an intruder. I checked your records, and it wasn't done at the hospital, either."

Oops. "I must have misremembered."

The tapping continues. "Was it Danzou?"

Kakashi's obvious surprise does not help his case at all.

"We're not pressing him to talk about that," sensei says firmly, which, what?

"Namikaze, you are hopeless."

"I'm confused?" Kakashi says.

"You possess abilities you should not," Orochimaru says bluntly, ignoring the way sensei hisses and waves his hands at him. "The obvious conclusion is that your involvement with Danzou and ROOT is more than what was found in the records."

Huh. Kakashi thought he'd done pretty well being circumspect, which obviously he hadn't, but this is an interesting direction for their suspicions to have taken.

"Namikaze, really. This could be important. Did Danzou test your chakra?"

Kakashi really isn't sure what to do here. He's tried to avoid outright lies. "No," he says, slowly and not very convincingly.

Orochimaru thinks this over. "You have been very persistent in your efforts to track my activities. Did he tell you something about me?"

Kakashi should never have gone down this line of conversation, because he can't control his stricken expression. Perhaps it's time to revisit wearing a mask all the time, if this is what his poker face has come to.

"What," sensei says. "I didn't know about this."

"Because you didn't ask, obviously," Orochimaru says, irritated. "What did he say?"

Kakashi had paid very little attention to the revelations after Danzou's death, too preoccupied with deciding whether and how much it was okay to mourn his father. The only thing he remembers about Orochimaru and Danzou is from his future knowledge, and he can't be sure whether any of that has happened already.

He's quiet for too long, and they're both looking alarmed in their own way. Orochimaru is very, very still, and sensei looks like he's about to vibrate out of his chair.

"The… Uchiha…?" Kakashi ventures, trying to keep it as vague as possible.

He doesn't think he's ever seen Orochimaru truly surprised before. "He told you about _that?_ "

"About what?" sensei asks. "What's he talking about?"

"Danzou approached me with a request to research the Sharingan. He assured me that he would provide… samples."

"What!?"

"Well, obviously I didn't agree, or I'd hardly be telling you about it," Orochimaru says. He doesn't take his eyes off Kakashi. "That was a very classified project. You were high in his confidence. Or eavesdropping."

Kakashi decides to do what he should have done a long time ago, and keeps his mouth firmly shut.

"Hmm," Orochimaru says.

"Is this test almost done?" sensei asks. "Because Kakashi and I are definitely talking about this later, but I'm supposed to meet my team in twenty minutes."

"Ah," says Orochimaru, who is also supposed to meet his team in twenty minutes. "Come here, Hatake."

He has to channel his chakra into a bunch of seals, and Orochimaru takes notes on how much they light up. It's easy, and boring, so Kakashi amuses himself trying to determine how they work.

Sensei is apparently willing to let the Danzou thing go for now, because he helps.

"You can understand complex sealwork," Orochimaru says. "That didn't come up during testing yesterday."

"Only a little," Kakashi says. "And it's not exactly practical. Unless you're sensei. Or the Nidaime."

"Hmph," Orochimaru says. "Well, there's nothing wrong with your chakra. Which, if you've been doing sealwork, you should already know."

Oh. Right.

Kakashi rubs the back of his neck sheepishly.

"Still, not a complete waste of time," Orochimaru says. "There's always something new with you, Hatake."

Kakashi resolves to lie low and keep his mouth shut for a few days. Possibly years.

* * *

He does not keep that resolution. Oh, he refuses to talk about Danzou to sensei or his therapist, and he definitely doesn't mention him again around Orochimaru, but the minute he opens his first medical textbook he can't seem to shut up. He wants to know _everything._

If he had known this, he could have saved Obito. With enough skill, maybe he could have saved Rin. And with a little creativity, maybe he could have saved sensei and Kushina.

Well, he'll be ready to save them now.

He sits and reads with sensei or Kushina or even their across-the-hall neighbor, if neither of them are available. The terminology is too much for him, at first, because even though he's gotten much better with kanji practicing with sensei, there's a lot of it and he's never had any more to do with hospitals and medicine than absolutely necessary. He spends a lot of time with a dictionary on hand.

He absorbs Orochimaru's every lesson on chakra control like a sponge and practices diligently, some (sensei) might say obsessively.

He spars with his teammates and afterwards he practices healing all three of them.

He can't get enough of it.

"Well," sensei says. "I am guiltily relieved that I've never seen you so enthusiastic about something before, because I don't know if I could have weathered this alone."

Whatever.

It takes Kakashi two weeks to make the leap from studying seals and studying medicine to studying _medical seals_ , and then sensei refuses to use his clearance to get him any interesting books on the topic.

That's fine; Kakashi just asks Orochimaru.

Kakashi tunes them out as they shout at each other about it and concentrates on reading as fast as he can.

He does occasionally have to surface from his studies. Gai is working as hard as he is, training his body the way Kakashi is training his mind, and Kakashi does take a whole precious day to make sure that Orochimaru (or Gai himself) isn't pushing his friend beyond his limits.

But Orochimaru is aware of the limitations of the human body (probably because of his attempts to exceed them), and while Gai's schedule is intense, it isn't excessive. Well, not by Gai's standards, anyway.

Probably someone with less dedication than Gai would have protested so much hard work, but he thrives on it, and on Orochimaru's belief that he can be useful if he just does what he's told and follows the training schedule.

Orochimaru rewards his discipline with an exhaustive test of his aptitude for various weapons, and Kakashi can't help a small, proud smile when he sees Gai pick up a nunchaku for the first time.

Anko is already used to Orochimaru's idea of training, so she mixes up poisons and tests them (and her teammates) by trying to use her creations on them, and Orochimaru starts teaching her how to summon snakes after an extremely nasty test of her chakra control, and she goes somewhere three times a week to learn a bunch of extremely nasty taijutsu.

They don't really ever practice working together as a team, but Kakashi isn't the jounin-sensei here, and anyway, he has studying to do.

* * *

"But I've had an idea about the Creation Rebirth technique!" Kakashi protests.

"Where did you even hear about that? I forbid you from trying that on your own."

Kakashi doesn't bother trying to change sensei's mind. He'll just ask Orochimaru later.

"And don't even think about going around me and asking Orochimaru instead."

Kakashi tries to look innocent.

"What did I do to deserve this?"

Despite his efforts to hold onto it, Kakashi loses his notebook, and sensei puts it up and out of reach. Kakashi could just climb the wall and get it, but probably not without sensei noticing. "I ate two good meals today. I played with Gai. Why can't I have my book back?"

"Because it's dinner time, and because I've invited my team over."

Kakashi stops. "Oh, is that today?"

"Yes. Now get yourself into the kitchen, they'll be here any minute now."

Right then, there's a knock at the door.

"Why don't you go get that? I don't want you sneaking off with your notebook."

"I wouldn't," Kakashi says, which is a lie, but he goes to answer the door anyway.

It's Hizashi.

"Hey!" Kakashi says. "I haven't seen you in a while!"

"Lucky me," Hizashi says, but he doesn't really mean it.

"I hear you're awesome," Kakashi says, which is a bit of an exaggeration, but not really.

Hizashi preens. "Really?"

"Yep! Told you you could make chuunin."

Hizashi smiles slightly, which is a big deal for him.

"So tell me more about your private lessons. Are they really going to teach you Main Branch techniques?"

"Maybe," Hizashi says. "The elders are very keen for the Hyuuga clan to make a good showing when teamed with an Uchiha."

Kakashi hadn't thought of that rivalry when he first suggested the matchup, and if he had he would have insisted sooner. Hizashi has enjoyed unprecedented acceptance in his clan since Obito became his teammate, and a corresponding boost in confidence.

"We should practice again sometime," Kakashi says.

Hizashi scowls. "One day you're going to have to tell me how you got so good at countering the Gentle Fist."

"Nope," Kakashi says.

There's another knock at the door, and Rin arrives, with Obito in tow.

Kakashi takes a few deep breaths.

"Dinner's almost ready!" Kushina calls from the kitchen, saving him from having to say anything.

They go and sit at the table, then Kakashi jumps up to help bring the food in. Obito is scowling at him, which isn't bothering him at all, he's just trying to make sure this is a peaceful dinner.

Kushina pats his shoulder and lets him help her transfer the ramen from takeout containers into real bowls, presumably so it looks like she actually cooked it. Sensei made a bunch of snacks, but he was busy with his team all day so asked her to contribute.

Kakashi gives her a conspiratorial smile and tips the empty containers into the bin.

Kakashi is sitting between Rin and Hizashi, and he talks with Rin about medical ninjutsu until sensei tells him to stop, then he talks to Hizashi about training, then back to Rin again.

He does say hi to Obito, who doesn't say anything back.

Kakashi tries not to sigh, and reminds himself that Obito never particularly liked him, that he's probably much happier without Kakashi hanging around, and now that Kakashi's training to be a medic he can save Obito from anything that might threaten him without having to learn to fight at his side.

So it's fine.

"So what's Orochimaru-sama like as a sensei?" Rin asks.

"Well," Kakashi says. "He's very smart. And very… driven."

"Like Minato-sensei?"

"Not at all."

"Oh."

Kushina snickers into her ramen.


	6. Chapter 6

Warnings: Fighting-related violence and injury, some references to Kakashi's traumatic past

* * *

"So you know how when someone tells you they love you, you're supposed to say it back?" Kakashi asks.

"No," Orochimaru says.

"Is that a rule, or more of a suggestion?" Kakashi asks.

"One, I don't know. Two, I don't know why you think I would, and three, I am your sensei, not your mother, go ask Namikaze."

Kakashi sighs. Obviously he can't ask sensei.

"Read your book," Orochimaru says.

Kakashi reads his book.

* * *

"It's come to my attention," the Sandaime Hokage says, "that your team hasn't been on a single mission."

Orochimaru scowls. "I'm training them for the chuunin exams."

"That's not for months, and there is a minimum number of completed missions required before you can nominate a team for the exams."

"No there isn't."

"Well, there will be. Take some missions."

Orochimaru's scowl deepens.

His genin try to be as small and quiet as possible, so as not to draw his wrath.

* * *

Gai has a normal home life and his father works construction. He is excellent at D-rank missions. Kakashi has suffered through years of them as genin and sensei, and he's at least resigned to it. Anko is easily distracted, and they don't mind doing her share of the work if it means she doesn't try to poison the client.

The problem with D-rank missions is Orochimaru.

"No," he says, when they get offered a mission to paint a fence.

"No," he says, when they're asked to plow a field.

"No," he says, when a river needs to be cleaned.

And so on.

They don't get offered babysitting missions, but otherwise cover the entire spectrum of available D-ranks.

Kakashi is actually missing chasing that damn cat.

"You want us to become chuunin," he tells Orochimaru. "Then we will go away and you won't have to deal with this anymore."

"I don't have to deal with it now."

"We don't really need supervision, you can just hand us the mission scroll and leave. You can even take Anko, summon some snakes and terrorize the rodent population, and leave it to Gai and me."

"Sarutobi-sensei said I couldn't do that."

Kakashi sighs.

Gai gives him a sympathetic look, then goes back to training. He's more comfortable now, but he doesn't try and boss Orochimaru. Anko might, but she doesn't want to do D-ranks, so she won't.

* * *

"I don't know what else to do," Kakashi complains to sensei one night.

Sensei pats his shoulder. "All genin have different challenges to face."

"You could just say that you don't know what to do, either."

* * *

Gai demolishes all the training posts in their favorite practice area, Kakashi's efforts to recreate the Yin Seal produce a visible mark for the first time, along with a three day coma, and Anko puts a mild paralytic into Konoha's main water supply.

"Fine," the Sandaime says, through gritted teeth. "Here is a C-rank mission. Get out of the village. Take your time."

Orochimaru looks like he's considering rejecting this, too. But finally, looking just as irritated as his sensei, he accepts the scroll with a muttered "fine".

C-rank. Kakashi has kind of a bad feeling about this.

* * *

They travel to a small town about twenty miles away that's reportedly having trouble with bandits.

Kakashi summons Pakkun, and promptly gets the breath knocked out of him when Bull comes, too.

He wheezes out a greeting from underneath the dog, who seems fully as large as he will be in the future.

"Your summoning technique is the strangest I've ever seen," Orochimaru says, making no move to help him up.

Gai lifts the enormous dog and is still able to offer Kakashi a hand up.

"Thanks," Kakashi says.

He explains the problem to Pakkun, who runs off to sniff out the bandits.

Orochimaru raises an eyebrow.

"Oh, Bull's not much of a tracker," Kakashi says, giving the big mutt a fond pat.

Anko appreciates things with teeth as big as her hand, so she and Gai and Kakashi pet Bull and talk while they wait for Pakkun to come back.

It helps keep Kakashi from freaking out too much.

This is his first time out of the village in this time, and the fact that it's for a premature C-rank mission seems… ominous.

There's a mountain nearby, but it's not a very big one, and it isn't long before Pakkun is back to lead them to the bandit cave.

It's a tough call whether Anko or Gai is more excited.

"What is wrong with you?" Orochimaru asks.

Kakashi, who is so tense it's painful, jumps about a foot in the air. "Nothing."

"Hmm," Orochimaru says.

They creep up near the cave entrance, and Orochimaru proceeds to do a whole lot of nothing at all.

"I think we're supposed to figure it out ourselves," Kakashi says, when the silence starts to get too much for Gai.

He takes Orochimaru's lack of response as assent.

"I have a few toxins that could be airborne, in a pinch," Anko says.

"We have no way to calculate how large that cave is," Kakashi says. "How would you know how much to use?"

"I'll just use all of it."

Kakashi sighs. "I'm going to go do some reconnaissance. You two stay here. And don't poison anyone."

The jutsu that let him phase through the ground is one that he retained. It's a basic earth jutsu, so it's not too strange that he might have picked it up somewhere, and it was incredibly useful over the years so it's managed to stick in his head.

The cave isn't large—Anko probably could fill it with poison if the squad isn't too squeamish about liquefied insides—but they can't do that.

"There's a hostage," Kakashi says, returning to his teammates. "The client didn't mention that."

"Is it a young woman?" Gai asks.

"Why would that matter?" Anko asks.

"Isn't it more heroic that way?"

"I don't see why."

" _Anyway_ ," Kakashi says. "That means no poisoning. Here's the layout."

He sketches a rough map in the dirt. It's pretty straightforward. There are two men guarding the entrance, three more playing dice, and one man, probably the leader, menacing the prisoner.

"No, Gai, it's not a damsel in distress. It's some soft, middle-aged, merchant-type. Though I suppose you could argue that he's in distress."

Six men, not obviously armed, shouldn't be any match for three ninja, even raw genin.

"But the priority is the prisoner," Kakashi stresses.

Anko rolls her eyes. "Your priority, maybe. Spandex here is supposed to make a splashy entrance and toss them around a bit, I sneak in and take out the rest, and you rescue the damsel. Isn't that supposed to be your job?"

She does have a point. Except, "I don't think he'd appreciate being called a damsel."

"Whatever."

It doesn't _seem_ dangerous. There don't _appear_ to be any complications.

Kakashi's hands are shaking.

Orochimaru is watching him closely.

"Fine," he says, even though there wasn't a question. "I just don't like caves."

This barely qualifies, more a large hollow, really, and there aren't any enemy ninja here, just stupid civilian bandits.

It's still giving him the sweats.

They get into position, and at Kakashi's signal, Gai jumps down between the two guards and straddle kicks them simultaneously, right in the head.

"Dynamic Entry!" he hollers, which makes Kakashi smile fondly, and then Gai picks one of the guards up and throws him at the dice players.

Anko creeps up and jabs the one still on the ground with what has about a fifteen percent chance of being a non-fatal drug.

There's the sound of fighting and that certain din that always seems to accompany Gai from inside the hollow.

Right. His turn.

Kakashi slips in behind the fighting, checking several conflicting instincts that want him to join the fray and get himself and his team the hell out of here, and the flickering images of another cave, another life. His eye aches.

Forcing himself to ignore it, he pulls out a kunai and releases the captive's wrists.

"We're ninja," he says, reaching for the dirty cloth serving as a gag. "We're here to rescue you."

"My bag!" the man says, as soon as he can speak.

Definitely a merchant-type.

Kakashi's tempted to just throw him over his shoulder and drag him out, but the client specifically asked for any goods to be retrieved, if possible, so the bag is arguably more relevant to their mission than whoever this guy is.

He stomps on the foot of some idiot trying to sneak up on him, gets a good grip on his filthy shirt, and tosses him into the wall.

"In your own time," he tells the merchant pleasantly.

The man scrambles about until he comes up with a fat sack of goods, then clutches it to his chest as he follows Kakashi out into the sunlight.

All of the bandits are down, some groaning (probably Gai's work), and some suspiciously still (Anko).

Orochimaru is lounging against a rock, probably too far away to intervene, in Kakashi's opinion, but everything went fine so he supposes it would be stupid to make an issue of it.

Everything went fine.

Kakashi cringes, expecting the mountain to explode or something.

But it doesn't, and when he can't deal with Orochimaru's stare any longer he goes to check on their merchant, who is loudly complaining to a totally disinterested Anko that his wrists are chafed.

Kakashi heals them, and then a scratch on Gai's leg where he ran into a stalactite (how, Kakashi isn't sure), and that seems to be that.

"So," Anko says. "Can we leave, then? I have a new recipe I want to try."

Kakashi's shoulders are a giant knot of tension all the way from the town to the village gates. He just can't believe it.

He's had D-rank chores that were more complicated than that. He might even say that _all_ of Team Seven's D-ranks were more complicated than that. Naruto wandering into the Forest of Death trying to walk a dog, Naruto falling off a waterfall picking up trash, Naruto getting mauled by the cat…

Well, there is a certain common element there, but still.

Kakashi does not have uneventful missions. He doesn't.

He almost jumps out of his skin when sensei pounces on him at their apartment.

"How did it go? What happened? Are you alright?"

"I—" Kakashi pauses, takes a few steadying breaths. "It was fine."

Sensei looks him over suspiciously. "Really?"

Kakashi tries out a smile. "Yeah. It was."

* * *

If the Sandaime was trying to make a point by giving them a C-rank as their first mission, Orochimaru misses it. Their easy success pretty much guarantees that they'll get another one, and they do.

Team Orochimaru delivers supplies to village outposts, has some excruciatingly boring backup guard duty, ousts a few more bandits, and escorts a merchant caravan to the border of the Land of Rivers.

Kakashi lingers at the border, fancying that he can see the shimmer of sand in the great desert of the Land of Wind, or that the clouds to the northwest are the edge of Amegakure, where Jiraiya lost—will lose— _definitely won't lose—_ his life.

But it's probably just his imagination.

* * *

"We have a mission," Anko says, dropping in through the window. "What's for breakfast?"

Kakashi sighs and pushes his bowl towards her.

"How long will you be gone this time?" sensei asks.

"Orochimaru-sensei thinks a few weeks," Anko says with her mouth full. "Some kind of resupply thing. Again."

Sensei sighs. "I thought I would have years before you were off on missions like this."

Kakashi stops trying to sneak bites of his own breakfast. "Years?"

"Okay, maybe not years."

"Orochimaru-sensei says we're going to take the first chuunin exam offered, and we're all going to pass," Anko says.

"That's not very likely," sensei says. "You shouldn't get your hopes up."

"Oh, I'm not worried about disappointing myself," she says. "It's him you should worry about disappointing."

Kakashi agrees completely, but sensei does not look convinced.

* * *

Konoha has a permanent surveillance base in Grass Country. Iwa has one, too. It's part of the treaty the Sandaime negotiated, and Grass gets to charge outrageous fees for them, so everyone is satisfied.

Except Kakashi. He's not sure he wants to be that close to the Kannabi Bridge.

"It's alright," sensei assures him. "Hardly anyone in Iwa blames Konoha for the almost-war any longer."

There's also that.

But Kakashi doesn't really have a good reason for refusing to go, or even a bad one that has a chance of being accepted, so he packs his bag and follows his team out of the village.

"I thought you were over this fear of going on missions," Orochimaru says.

Kakashi tries to look less tense. But at the first sign of a bridge, he's bailing, and he's taking his teammates with him. Orochimaru can like it or lump it.

The resupply goes off without a hitch, which is the new normal in Kakashi's world. The most exciting thing that happens is Anko complaining about the rain.

"How can there be this much water?" she whines, the fourth day of the downpour.

Kakashi is just as wet and miserable as the rest of them—except possibly Orochimaru, his hair isn't even frizzing, it's weird—but he's not going to complain. They haven't been ambushed, they haven't stumbled over any over-powered missing-nin, and no one has died.

He can deal with mud in his sandals.

No sooner does he think that—really, the _exact second_ —masked ninja drop out of the trees.

There are whole messages hidden in ninja masks. There are the ANBU masks, meant to distance predator and prey from the acts committed, aesthetic masks like Kakashi used to wear, which usually indicate some deep-seated trauma, practical masks like they wear in Mist, that serve some purpose related to your jutsu.

Then there's these masks, which cover the entire head, paired with cloaks that disguise any of the form underneath. The uniform of a shinobi doing something totally illegal that he doesn't want traced back to his village.

Kakashi can feel the way Orochimaru immediately tenses.

"Run!"

It isn't in Orochimaru's nature to panic, and Kakashi has never heard him shout except at Jiraiya or sensei. But he still manages to convey a sense of urgency, and Kakashi and his teammates are off and running before he even finishes the word.

Kakashi's body knows what to do, and he channels his chakra into speed and secure footing on the wet branches without much conscious thought, which is fortunate, because his mind is running in circles.

He wants to panic. This is the first time his team has been in any serious danger, and something could happen to them, and what if he panics and screws it all up? Not even the realization that he's panicking about panicking stops the downward spiral of his thoughts.

He wants to turn back and help Orochimaru fight. It isn't the Konoha way to abandon a comrade, and anyway, that's always Kakashi's role, it feels unnatural to be the one running.

He wants to stop and check where they're going, because what if they're headed towards the bridge and something terrible happens?

He does none of those things, though. He runs blindly through the forest, dodging attacks, and he grabs Gai when he almost falls on a slick branch, and he turns Anko around when she tries to shoot her blowgun at one of their pursuers.

They crash into a clearing, and Kakashi blinks against the sheets of rain that have reduced visibility to near-zero. Where are they? Is there shelter? Are they about to run off a cliff?

He nearly jumps out of his skin when a hand grabs his shoulder, and he's halfway through a throw when he realizes it's Orochimaru.

"Keep going," Orochimaru says, right in his ear so the sound carries through the rain, and Kakashi keeps going.

Right up to the rocks.

Right into the cave.

Kakashi freaks out. He's so _stupid_. Did anything even happen at the bridge? He's pretty sure that he and sensei destroyed it easily. It's not the bridge itself where his entire world fell apart.

He feels like he's watching himself from a great distance, kneeling in the cave where Obito died, didn't die, where everything that made him Obito was lost forever, pulling at his hair and screaming and lost.

He's jolted back into his body when his teeth knock together painfully.

Orochimaru is shaking him.

"You cannot do this right now. Are you listening to me? We are in real danger. What is the primary duty of a medic?"

Months (years) of training bypass his mental gibbering. "To stay alive and uninjured," Kakashi recites.

"That's right. If you fall apart now, who will heal your team?"

"But the cave!"

"What about it? It gives us some measure of visibility, and makes their superior numbers less of an advantage. And we'll never get fire jutsu to work in that deluge, which is some of your strongest offensive ninjutsu."

Kakashi knows this. Those are all very valid points. But, "I have a bad feeling!"

Orochimaru gives him another, harder shake. "Well I have a bad feeling about the group of highly-motivated jounin who can't afford to let us carry word of their presence here back to Konoha!"

"Sensei," Anko says.

"Fight or die," Orochimaru says, and drops Kakashi to turn and fight.

Anko seems to melt into the shadows as she flits from target to target. Gai catapults from one side of the cave to the other, inflicting as much damage as possible. Orochimaru reminds everyone why he is counted among the Legendary Sannin, never repeating the same jutsu twice.

Kakashi feels like the lowest form of trash as he cowers against the wall.

This is the cave.

Obito died _right there_ , less than a body-length away, died in every way that mattered.

And there; that was where Rin cried.

Here is where Kakashi got his Sharingan.

He dodges an attack automatically, decades of training coming to his rescue. Even before Orochimaru's painful lessons about a medic's primary duty this has been drilled into his head. Survive. Don't die. You aren't any good to anyone if you die.

Not that he's doing a whole lot of good now.

Kakashi isn't sure who sets off the explosion. It's not him, though, because he isn't doing a damn thing besides flip the fuck out in the corner.

There's an ominous rumbling.

Everyone sort of freezes.

Except, ironically, Kakashi.

It feels like he has all the time in the world to grab Anko's wrist, and Gai's collar. To plant his feet firmly in the quaking ground. To channel all that perfect chakra control of his into a spinning throw that sends them both out into the rain before the entrance collapses.

Yes, he thinks. That's right. Save them.

A huge crack appears in the floor, and Kakashi has time to think that he really thought he would be crushed when the roof fell in, not fall to his death, isn't that strange, and then he's falling, and everything goes black.

* * *

Ow, Kakashi thinks, blinking painfully in the absolute darkness.

But pain means not dead yet, and he forces himself to take inventory of his injuries.

His legs are bruised but functional. His right arm is twisted and sore, but he thinks the numbness will pass. His left arm is definitely broken.

He twitches his fingers experimentally. In a pinch, he might be able to use a few jutsu.

There's dried blood all over his face, and he tastes it on his dry lips.

Right. First order of business, head injury.

It's not really recommended that medics treat their own head injuries, but it happens often enough that they're taught how anyway. And while there's a nasty bump, Kakashi doesn't think he's actually concussed.

Something rustles in the darkness.

Kakashi immediately lets the light of his chakra fade, scooting to his left as silently as possible so an enemy won't find him at his last known location.

A hand clamps over his mouth, and he bites down hard enough to draw blood, kicking out behind him with all the force he can muster in this awkward position.

Orochimaru swears in his ear.

Kakashi stops struggling.

"I don't know what I expected," Orochimaru grumbles, almost inaudibly.

Kakashi doesn't, either. He spits out the blood, in case there's something weird in it.

"Can you fight?"

"Yes."

"How long can you sustain a flame?"

Kakashi shrugs before he remembers that Orochimaru can't see him, but the man must get the message anyway because he keeps talking.

"When I step back, I want you to create the smallest fireball you can manage, and hold it as long as you can. Is that understood?"

Kakashi nods again, and forces his left arm into position.

Orochimaru steps back.

Kakashi runs through the familiar seals, biting his lip through as his arm screams, then purses his lips and spits fire.

It illuminates still bodies, groaning bodies, and a few ninja blinking against the sudden brightness.

Orochimaru moves.

Two men go down in the first onslaught, and Orochimaru almost absentmindedly crushes someone's throat under his foot as he runs by. Snakes erupt out of his sleeves, and the next man gets a kunai up in time to block Orochimaru's descending sword.

There's a spark as they clash, and the fire goes out.

Kakashi coughs, trying to drag air into his dry throat, and leans against the rock to try and shield the green glow as he soothes his throat and does what he can to repair his arm. He hasn't gotten as far as broken bones, yet, and the fight isn't over.

Except it is, because by the time he's done that, Orochimaru has concentrated his chakra into his hand and is holding it up like a torch, checking that the prone bodies are really dead.

"This doesn't look natural," Orochimaru says, studying the walls.

Kakashi shrugs.

"Where are the other two?"

"I got them out before the floor fell in," Kakashi says.

"Hmm."

Kakashi looks around. He has to admit, this does look like a tunnel, not just a random hole in the ground.

"Shall we?" Orochimaru asks, picking a direction at random.

They eventually come to a dead end, and stop to eat a ration bar and drink some water, and Kakashi makes Orochimaru sit down while he checks him over for injuries. There's nothing significant, though Kakashi does heal the bite mark he left. A hand injury can be very dangerous in battle.

They don't have anything better to do, so they turn around and go back the other way. Orochimaru saves his chakra and they walk back to the original drop point in the dark.

Without the distraction of potential enemies lurking about, they can see that the oppressive darkness is just the slightest bit lighter in the direction they haven't gone yet.

Kakashi looks towards where he knows Orochimaru to be, even though he can't see him, and they must be in agreement because they keep going forward without the chakra light.

It's soon clear that there is a light source down here, and it gets less and less likely that they've fallen into a natural rock formation. Or an uninhabited one.

Then they hear the voices.

And Kakashi… he _knows_ these voices. He's heard them in his nightmares.

He tugs on Orochimaru's sleeve, and tries to convey his utter panic with just his eyes.

Orochimaru nods, and pushes him against the wall as he peers around the corner.

Kakashi huffs, as quietly as possible, but they don't have a lot of choices here, and he can't explain what he knows or how he knows it without Orochimaru thinking he's completely crazy.

Orochimaru gathers his chakra, centering himself, and darts around the corner.

Kakashi waits about three seconds and then follows.

Orochimaru has what looks like a bit like one of those white constructs pinned neatly against the wall with his sword, except half of it is as black as the other half is white. Being impaled doesn't seem to have inconvenienced it much. Most of the constructs died easily, but Kakashi remembers Obito's incredible healing factor, the hollow where his heart should have been. If this is the original, it doesn't surprise him that it can't die by ordinary means.

But Orochimaru is a jounin and a genius and famed for his library of jutsu. He'll think of something.

The other person in the room, who Orochimaru must have considered the lesser threat, is clearly Madara.

Maybe it's not obvious if you don't already know he's alive, because when Kakashi saw him on the roof of the hospital, he looked like he'd stepped right out of a history book. Here, now, he looks like an old man. He's wearing a loose robe, not his armor, and his hair is completely white, his face lined with wrinkles. But it's still Madara.

There's a glint of black and red under his hair, and Kakashi immediately looks at the floor.

He doesn't have much experience fighting the Sharingan without one of his own, but Gai taught him a few tricks over the years, back when they still periodically went after Itachi.

Kakashi carefully raises his eyes until he can see Madara's hands. They're twisted and age-spotted, and he seems to be struggling to form handsigns.

Kakashi really does not understand what is happening here, but he's not going to waste an advantage like this.

"Zetsu!" Madara shouts, voice quavering.

Kakashi darts towards Madara, and has to throw himself to the side when he's intercepted by the black and white construct. Potentially called Zetsu.

Orochimaru follows after, and dumps some kind of acid on the thing.

Kakashi rolls under a fireball, the signature Uchiha jutsu, and notices that Madara isn't lounging against the giant statue for aesthetic purposes. Or, not purely for aesthetic purposes. He's attached to the thing, by a combination of mechanical and chakra wires.

Well. You don't have to be a top jounin to identify _that_ weakness.

He glances at Orochimaru, who hasn't made any headway against Zetsu but is keeping it distracted, and then at Madara, who is still trying to trap him in a genjutsu, which is probably as potent as ever, regardless of his advanced age, but Kakashi isn't that stupid.

He'll never have a better opportunity.

Kakashi's hands move in a set of seals he'll never forget, however much he may want to, and lightning crackles around his fist. He runs, and as he runs, he hones it, refines it, until it's sharp as a real bolt of lightning, as the precise strikes of the Gentle Fist Neji taught him on the long run from Obito.

He doesn't have the Sharingan any longer, but wires can't dodge.

He strikes them precisely, severing chakra and metal alike, and both halves fall to the ground.

Madara gasps, once, twice, and, without any further ceremony, dies.

Then Kakashi remembers why it's a bad idea to fight electricity with more electricity.

Power surges through him, not in a good way, and his whole body rattles and his hair sticks straight up and his heart skips a beat, then another.

He's fighting to keep his scrambled thoughts together and to channel healing chakra into himself, he can't focus on any one injury, but hopefully he'll stumble across something useful by accident.

Then the statue, without any warning, explodes.

Orochimaru throws himself over Kakashi, who is still twitching involuntarily, and presses his palms into the rock and creates a protective dome over them. Kakashi can hear rocks crashing around them, the whole complex must be collapsing, and very much doubts that this dome is going to hold.

Madara is dead. Danzou is dead. Gai is not in the collapsing cave, and sensei and Kushina are safely back in Konoha.

It could be worse.

* * *

Kakashi opens his eyes. It doesn't make much difference.

"Are you awake?" Orochimaru asks, from very close by.

Uncomfortably close by.

Right. Cave-in, the second one of the day. Madara. Zetsu.

"Probably not a good choice," Orochimaru says dryly. "I'm sure suffocation is much more pleasant while unconscious."

Kakashi tries to take stock of their situation. There is rock under his back, and everywhere he can reach. He can't move at all, because Orochimaru is pinned against him, presumably by more rock.

It's not a good situation.

"I estimate we have perhaps two more hours of air," Orochimaru says.

"You can't just walk out?" Kakashi asks. He's seen Orochimaru use the rock tunneling technique. Wait, maybe that was only in the future.

"I can sustain the jutsu for four hundred feet, perhaps five if I push it, and if I leave you," Orochimaru says. "How big do you think that mountain was?"

Right. Kakashi would have thought of that himself in a moment.

"Would your green friend have thought to go for help?"

"Trying to dig us out by hand is more his style," Kakashi says. "Anko?"

Orochimaru huffs. "Anko has a terrible sense of direction. She'll probably still be wandering around a week from now, trying to find the outpost."

No help coming, and if Orochimaru had any ideas for escape, they wouldn't still be here.

"Is it just me, or did that man look like Uchiha Madara?" Orochimaru asks.

Kakashi ignores him. He's trying to think here.

"I can't believe he's still alive."

"Jealous?" Kakashi asks. "I heard you were looking into immortality."

"Where did you…? Nevermind. That was a long time ago. And anyway, why would I want to be a helpless old man, trapped in a cave with a crazy… being?"

Good. If Kakashi dies here, and Orochimaru doesn't, it seems likely he'll continue on the relatively straight, slightly meandering path. And not start stealing anyone's body in a mad bid for eternal life.

"There is very little human about that… Zetsu," Orochimaru says. "He may yet live. Or, exist, rather."

Kakashi reaches for his chakra. He hasn't had much time to build up his stores in the Yin Seal, but there's some, enough. It will have to be enough.

"At least he's likely to be trapped here," Orochimaru says.

Kakashi channels his own chakra, and the chakra from the Yin Seal. It's strange to be managing two distinct sources of chakra, and he sends a silent mental apology to Naruto, for not being more patient with his struggles.

"What are you—" Orochimaru says.

Kakashi reaches for the array painstakingly stitched into the back of every one of Gai's jumpsuits, and teleports them out of there with sensei's Hiraishin no Jutsu.


	7. Chapter 7

"You're never leaving the village again. Or helping me study jutsu. In fact, you're never using any jutsu, of any kind, ever again."

Kakashi blinks. Slowly. His eyelids feel heavy. And he can't seem to turn his head.

"You and I are retiring to the country and becoming farmers. What are your feelings about sheep?"

"Mmragh," Kakashi says.

Sensei's anxious face appears in his line of vision, sparing him the effort of having to move. "You're awake? He's awake!"

Kakashi decides to just lie there for a while.

Time passes in a haze of medics and visitors.

The Yin Seal-Hiraishin combination didn't quite work, except in the sense that he did successfully transport himself and Orochimaru out, almost crushing Gai and freaking him and Anko both out with their abrupt appearance. Orochimaru basically had to invent a new technique to keep Kakashi from dying on the spot, and he had to be evacuated from the outpost by an emergency medical team.

Anko and Gai were barely hurt. Orochimaru broke a few important things when the cave collapsed, but he's made a full recovery in the weeks Kakashi's been in the hospital. He even remembered to send a team in to fill the remains of the cave with plaster, in hopes that, if the Zetsu thing survived, at least it won't be able to get out.

No one died. The world is saved.

"Sheep farm," sensei says, when Kakashi points this out.

Kushina sighs and drags sensei away. Kakashi should tell her how much he appreciates her more often.

Kakashi should have died of chakra exhaustion, and no one's quite sure why he didn't, though they don't put it in exactly that way. Kakashi doesn't mention his personal theory, which is that he has too much practice with it, because he doesn't actually want to spend the rest of his life farming sheep, or whatever you do with the things. Kakashi's not sure he's ever even seen a real, live sheep.

But it does mean he has a long, boring recovery, and then an incredibly long, mind-numbingly boring stretch where he's perfectly fine and they keep him for observation 'just in case.'

He's relieved to finally go back to Kushina and sensei's apartment, to his own room and his own shuriken blanket.

"I'm fine," he insists, as sensei fusses over him and helps him to a chair.

"It's summer," he says, when sensei cocoons him in about twenty blankets.

Sensei covers the table with food, has to get the endtables from both his own and Kakashi's rooms to accommodate all the plates, and would have hovered if Kushina hadn't tripped him into a chair.

Kakashi is so, so tired of hospital food, and decides he'd just be wasting his breath questioning the insane amount of food.

He's just savoring his first bite when there's a knock at the door.

"I heard you're back home!" Gai says, trying to keep his voice down in deference to Kakashi's supposed frailty.

"Totally fine, now," Kakashi says, with his mouth full. "Hungry?"

Gai smiles, a little uncertainly, then more broadly when Kakashi fails to spontaneously combust or whatever he was imagining. "Yes!"

Sensei is just sitting down when there's another knock.

"I saw Gai come up here," Anko says, unapologetically. "So I guessed you made it out of the hospital without more dramatics."

Kakashi smiles. Anko is still Anko, in any universe. "There's food."

She steals the dumpling that's he is currently holding, which he has clearly claimed for himself, and shuffles a dish or two off one of the endtables so she can sit.

"Maybe I should get some more chairs," sensei says.

There's another knock.

He sighs and goes back to the door. "Hello, come on in, I'll just be across the hall, begging for chairs."

Hizashi has enough manners to pretend that's normal, and just nods and comes inside. "It pleases me to see you've recovered," he says.

Anko rolls her eyes.

"Yeah," Kakashi says, still concentrating on eating. "It's a nice change."

Sensei comes back with four chairs and Orochimaru.

"Look who was lurking in the hallway," sensei says, trying to squeeze all the chairs around their small table.

"I do not lurk," Orochimaru says.

Gai chokes on his noodles.

"I have some questions about—" Orochimaru begins.

"Nope!" sensei interrupts. "No questions, no jutsu, no shop talk. This is a welcome home dinner, and congratulations on your recovery, and possibly a send-off to pursue the quieter life of animal husbandry."

"Husband like marrying?" Anko whispers loudly, wrinkling her nose.

Kakashi is saved from having to reply by yet another knock at the door.

"Just come in!" sensei yells. "It's not locked!"

Kakashi actually stops eating for a moment when he sees Obito skulking in the doorway.

Rin appears behind him, whispers something in his ear and shoves him inside. "Hello, sensei!" she says. "We heard the good news, and wanted to stop by and offer Kakashi our best wishes for his recovery!"

She elbows Obito, who mumbles something.

"These are for you," she says, offering Kakashi a bundle of flowers.

"Oh, um, thanks," he says.

"Was I supposed to bring flowers?" Gai asks.

"Won't you sit down?" Kakashi asks. "There's plenty of food."

Jiraiya turns up late, without knocking, and he and Orochimaru actually manage to be civil to each other in the name of enjoying sensei's impromptu feast.

"You're really something," Jiraiya says, two dishes in, when he remembers why he showed up in the first place. Or maybe he heard about the food first and that's why he's here.

"Okay," Kakashi says.

A few more people drop by, just to say hello or confirm the location of their absent children, but all the people Kakashi cares about most are here in this room. Or waiting to be born.

* * *

The peace lasts for two whole days, and then sensei finds out that Orochimaru nominated his team for the chuunin exams.

"I'm out of the hospital," Kakashi says.

Orochimaru and sensei are too busy shouting at each other to hear.

"Those last few weeks of rest were totally unnecessary," Kakashi says.

They still don't hear.

He huffs and goes to find Kushina. The exams are less than a month away, he's going to need to work hard to get back into shape.

"You don't have to sign the form," sensei says, hours later when he's tucking Kakashi into bed.

"I don't want to brag," Kakashi says. "But I did take out Uchiha Madara."

Sensei groans. "Don't remind me. I still can't believe that happened."

Neither can Kakashi. He'd never made the connection between Obito's miraculous survival and Madara's, though even with the wisdom of hindsight, he still doesn't see how he could have predicted where Madara was hiding.

"It's not that I don't think you're an extremely gifted ninja," sensei says. "You're smart and brave and disturbingly capable. But… _Madara_."

Kakashi blushes and hopes it isn't obvious in the dark. "He was mostly dead already," he mumbles.

"I'm not questioning your skill, I just worry. You're growing up so fast, though, so I guess I'll have to get used to it."

Suddenly Kakashi isn't tired anymore. He sits up straight. "Sensei… you know I'll always need you, right? Even if I'm a chuunin? Even when I'm all grown up?"

Sensei hugs him. "I know that. If you think I won't be trying to stuff you with food and fuss over you when you're as old as Jiraiya-sensei, you haven't been paying attention."

Kakashi relaxes very slightly. "Right. 'Course."

Sensei tucks him in again, and ruffles his hair. "'Night, Kakashi. If you're still determined to take this exam in the morning, I'll help you train. I love you."

Kakashi chews on the edge of his blanket, which he hasn't done since he was five. The first time. "Love you, too," he mumbles into fabric.

Sensei pauses mid-motion, half-sitting, half-standing.

A hand brushes Kakashi's forehead, which he doesn't see because his eyes are shut tight.

"See you in the morning," sensei says, voice warm, and Kakashi's face is wet where tears dripped on him.

He doesn't open his eyes until the door shuts again, then stares at the ceiling. He's not sure he really understands how to love someone, but he decided in that cave, that if this the closest he'll ever get, he doesn't want to die without sensei knowing how he feels.

* * *

The chuunin exam is in Iwa. Kakashi joins the procession of Konoha ninja in a sort of daze.

"We won't be anywhere near that cave," sensei says. He's invited himself along, even though he decided not to nominate his team. "We're going straight across the Kannabi Bridge; we'll hardly even be in the Land of Grass."

It's just so surreal. Even after all this time in his new life, some things are still absolute truths in Kakashi's world, and one of them is that Konoha's Yellow Flash shouldn't be within a hundred miles of Iwagakure.

He can't even get that worked up over the fact that they are going over the Bridge.

In this time, Kakashi has kind of a mixed reputation in Iwa. His father did start the Third Shinobi World War that one time, but he also stopped it. The two kind of cancel each other out. And Kakashi hasn't done anything personally to get on Iwa's radar, and neither has sensei.

It's just bizarre.

Kushina was not allowed to come. She threw a huge fit, but no Kage and no Jinchuuriki are invited. The treaties are holding, but everyone is still being very cautious with each other.

Kakashi hasn't been able to discreetly find out if it's widely known that Iwa does have a Jinchuuriki of its own, so he just has to hope that there won't be any trouble of that nature.

Or with himself.

Or with sensei.

"Relax, Kakashi," sensei says. "Everything's going to be fine."

"You're not having another bad feeling, are you?" Orochimaru asks.

Kakashi tries to force himself to at least appear less tense. "No, just your run-of-the-mill paranoia."

They arrive in Iwagakure, and are issued travel permits. The permits are only good for certain areas of the village. This is very carefully explained to them.

The Tsuchikage, who is very small and very terrifying, makes a speech that isn't so much welcoming as subtly threatening. The visiting ninja huddle together, not venturing far from their village-mates.

"Perhaps we should go to our assigned quarters," sensei says.

Konoha wants to make a good impression, so they go their quarters and behave themselves.

* * *

Finally, Anko, Kakashi and Gai head to the large, generic building set aside for the first part of the exam. They have to show their permits at the door, where they are closely scrutinized and then stamped.

"Huh," Gai says.

It is a ridiculously elaborate stamp, obviously an effort to keep it from being replicated.

Kakashi thinks this is all a little excessive, but then, Orochimaru managed to infiltrate the Konoha chuunin exams once, as well as an entire Suna invasion force.

So perhaps not that excessive.

"I wonder what we'll have to do," Anko says.

Kakashi shrugs. All chuunin exams are different, and they'll find out what they have to do when the Iwa administrators want them to, and no sooner.

Some genin are clustering together by village, and some aren't. Some don't even seem to be sticking to their three-person teams.

Kakashi's team is off by itself. The other Konoha teams are much older, and mostly seem annoyed that rookies are being allowed in at all.

Which is fine, this isn't a popularity contest.

An Iwa jounin opens the door, and the room immediately goes very quiet.

"Pay attention, because I'm only going to say this once. You will be called into the other room one at a time, and be told a secret. I will then set the clock for one hour. You will receive one point for every secret you learn, and lose two for every person who learns your secret. At the end of the hour, your points will be totaled up, and the lowest third will be eliminated. You may not leave this building. Otherwise, anything goes."

She does not ask if there are any questions, pulling out a list and calling off the first name.

Team Orochimaru huddles together, as do many of the other teams, to discuss strategy.

Anko knows a genjutsu that distorts sound, and after shoving another team out of the corner and walking around a bit, she announces that it's safe to talk.

"An interesting challenge!" Gai says.

"So there's no point in telling each other our secrets," Anko says. "It will just be a net loss."

"They won't get anything out of me," Gai says fiercely.

"Actually," Kakashi says, "they didn't say anything about squads. I think they're trying to encourage you to turn against your own team."

There's a moment of reflective silence.

"Well that's foolish," Gai says. "If Anko says sharing our secrets with each other hurts the squad, then I will tell no one for as long as I live!"

"Obviously," Kakashi says, after a moment of wrestling with thoughts of Gai dying. "But we need to be smart about this. We're smaller and younger than almost everyone here."

"Especially you," Anko says.

Kakashi ignores that. "We look like easy targets. And no, Gai, no one doubts your determination, but think about how it looks. We'll be everyone's target."

"I see what you mean," Anko says.

"So I think we should hide," Kakashi says.

Gai gives him a pained look.

"I agree," Anko says. "There must be all kinds of information-gathering jutsu that we don't know about, and the big rooms will just be a mess of fighting. We don't want to get knocked out in the first event."

"This is a big, stone building," Kakashi says. "But it's not disgustingly hot, even in the middle of summer and packed full of people. It must be well-ventilated."

"I like it," Anko says. "Ventilation shafts. A good place to hide."

Iwa hasn't organized this very efficiently, or maybe they're trying to add to the challenge in a subtle way, because it takes forever before everyone has their secret. For Kakashi, at least, it's a line of poetry.

He thinks fondly of Naruto, who probably would have forgotten it and wouldn't have to worry about telling anyone.

"And go!" the administrator says, and the room erupts into chaos.

Kakashi grabs his teammates' arms and they sink through the floor and into the hallway below. It doesn't take long before they find a ventilation shaft, and they duck inside just as a furious firefight crashes into the hall they just vacated.

There's an Iwa chuunin already here.

"You must be checking to see who lets something slip," Kakashi says.

"So are we supposed to fight you, too?" Anko asks.

He taps his clipboard. "There are no rules against it, but I would be very annoyed."

"Come on," Kakashi says, grabbing the back of Anko's shirt. "We want as many people reporting on everyone else as possible. We'll find another duct to hide in."

"But he'll tell people about us!" she protests, but follows anyway.

Everyone in the exam isn't completely stupid, so they do end up in a few skirmishes in these tight quarters. Anko mostly handles that, because subtle fighting and interrogation are much more her style.

Gai complains a lot, and Kakashi hovers over the grate and tries to remind himself that this is nothing at all like being entombed in the rock.

The alarm goes off with none of them having given up their secret, and Kakashi tries to decide whether or not to be surprised when he learns there was no mistake in the rules, you can pass or fail regardless of your teammates' scores.

Most of the Konoha teams end up together, whether they pass or are eliminated, but some of the other villagers have pairs, or even single candidates, going on to the next round.

This is a different village, Kakashi reminds himself.

"Congratulations," the same jounin says, when all the eliminated candidates have left. "Now it's time for the second round."

"Already?" someone asks, from the anonymity of the crowd.

She glares them all into silence, then leads them out onto the roof. There are still a lot of candidates, and it's kind of crowded.

"This is a straightforward survival test. You will go to that mountain," she points to a smudge on the edge of the horizon, "and locate one of the examiners hidden in or around the peak. He will give you a password. You will then return here, to this roof, and give one of them the password. Only the first third of the remaining teams will pass. Yes, I said teams. Even if there is only one of you left in the competition, you will count as a full team for scoring purposes."

Now Kakashi can see the trap. Those who were selfish and thought only of themselves will have a much harder time with this part of the test. And his team did another thing well, because by hiding, they've saved their energy and chakra and are uninjured.

Clever.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" the woman asks. "Go!"

The startled genin scatter.

Some fights break out immediately, but most of the candidates are eager to put some distance between themselves and the competition. It's a long way to the mountain, and there will be ample opportunities for an ambush or a fight much more in their favor.

Kakashi and his teammates are among those to start running. They settle into the easy pace shinobi use to cover long distances, and talk.

"We won't even need to fight anyone," Kakashi says.

Gai looks disappointed.

"I'm not saying we won't have to, just that it's not necessary to pass. That makes me think that the third exam will be physically demanding, and that we won't have much time to rest."

"They usually have a tournament for the last round," Anko says.

"But not always."

Speculating about the exam gives them something to do as they run, look for food and water, and sleep fitfully. It takes two days to reach the mountain, and they don't run into anyone else.

"Let's climb the mountain," Anko says. "More poetic that way."

"Yeah," Gai says, when she nudges him. "Poetry."

Kakashi rolls his eyes, but silently thanks them. He doesn't ever want to see another cave ever again.

It's hard work, the mountain seems to improbably be made entirely of sheer cliffs, but Gai's strength really comes in handy and he helps his teammates reach the top.

"Huh," the Iwa chuunin says. "I don't usually get many visitors. More snacks for you."

"Snacks?" Gai echoes, jumping up.

Kakashi is happy just staring at the sky and panting for a few more minutes.

The examiner forgot to mention that if they're quick enough, the chuunin have food, water, even medical supplies, in addition to the password. For teams that are quick enough.

The password is another poem, and not a short one, either.

Kakashi makes them all memorize it.

"If one of us is incapacitated and has to be carried across the finish line, how embarrassing would it be if they were the only one to know it?" he asks.

Gai mutters to himself the whole climb back down the cliffs.

The trip back isn't nearly as uneventful, because more than one team has decided that beating the password out of another team is a much better use of their resources than fetching it themselves.

It's not a bad strategy, but Kakashi and his teammates aren't easy prey, and Gai has been getting antsy at the lack of opportunity to show off his taijutsu.

"Take that! And that! Haha, I don't even know the password!"

Kakashi rolls his eyes, keeps out of the way while his teammates fight, and patches them up when they're done. He only takes out one candidate personally, when they stumble into his hiding place.

"You shouldn't waste your chakra," Gai tells him after. "I will protect you!"

"I can also fight," Kakashi says.

"Or you could summon those dogs of yours and scout out the terrain," Anko says.

Which is an excellent point, and he really should have thought of that. Kakashi summons his dogs.

They're far from the first team across the finish line, but they aren't the last to move onto the next round, either. That earns them a rest until the last winning team arrives.

Kakashi's trying to decide if it would be better or worse for his sudden nerves to go back to their assigned apartment and check that sensei is okay.

"Kakashi!" sensei calls, snatching him up and hugging him, even though Kakashi is pretty gross after that survival test. "You're amazing! You, too, Anko, Gai."

"Thanks," Anko says, snickering at Kakashi's predicament.

"I sent Orochimaru to get food," sensei says, which Kakashi is very sorry he missed. "I don't know how long a break you'll get, the spectators are already gathering in the arena—oops, pretend I didn't say that—so I thought a bath and some real food would be just the thing."

Anko is very annoyed that Iwa has strict rules against mixed bathing and that she's banished to the other side of the bathhouse. She isn't even mollified when Orochimaru gives her extra food.

Kakashi scrubs off way more dirt than should have been possible to accumulate in five days, then settles in for a long soak.

"Mmm," Gai says, then almost drowns himself when he falls asleep.

They have time to soak as long as they please and eat again before the candidates are summoned to the main arena.

That same woman is there again. It's starting to get a little weird that she still hasn't introduced herself. "This part of the exam will involve one-on-one fights. You will have one chance to show off your skills for our audience. If you win, you might not pass. If you lose, you might still pass, though it's unlikely. This is not just about winning and losing. Chuunin have to go beyond that."

That's the end of her speech, and they gather around and pick numbers out of a hat. There are an odd number of candidates, so three lucky Iwa ninja get stuck fighting a three-person free-for-all.

Kakashi doesn't think he breathes until he see that he, Gai and Anko have different numbers. It saves him from having to decide if it would be helpful or harmful for him to take a dive.

There's a special box set aside for the candidates so they can watch the fights, so that's where they all go.

Kakashi is glad he doesn't go first, because there's a twist. After five minutes, the spectators are allowed to participate, so long as they don't leave their seats.

He doesn't think he'll ever forget the look of surprise when a Suna genin gets a half-empty bowl of soup up-ended over his head. Kakashi's pretty impressed with the aim.

So. Win, but do it quickly, and with a lot of flash.

Gai excels at this, to Kakashi's complete lack of surprise. Kakashi thinks Gai's opponent might be a genjutsu user, but he can't be sure because the poor guy spends five minutes getting his ass kicked from one side of the arena to the other. He finally gasps out a surrender just when the audience is preparing their projectiles.

Anko wins in about twenty seconds. Her opponent leers at her, and she knees him in the groin and spits a cloud of poison in his face. Idiot. Kakashi hopes she isn't penalized for his stupidity.

Kakashi is last. Not last overall, but his teammates have put on a good showing, and he doesn't want to embarrass them, or sensei, or Orochimaru. Or himself.

He checks that sensei is still in the stands, which he's done about twenty times already despite reminding himself that that really isn't necessary, and steps into the arena.

He doesn't recognize his opponent, which probably means it isn't a future elite-jounin, or the Tsuchikage's grandson, or Iwa's Jinchuuriki. He doesn't want to admit how concerned he was about that last one.

The woman is a few years older than him, unsurprisingly, and a lot taller. She's carrying a sword like she knows how to use it.

Okay then.

"Begin!"

She doesn't wait for him to get settled, feet moving as soon as the first syllable is out.

Kakashi puts out his hand, like he's holding a sword of his own, and electricity crackles.

It was Orochimaru's idea, actually. He'd seen Kakashi's Chidori, and heard the story of the exploding tanto from sensei, and asked why Kakashi bothered with fragile metal at all. Which was a very good point.

Kakashi meets her strike with a sword of lightning, infused with just enough chakra to make it solid.

She jumps back before she gets too singed.

Kakashi had spent his first life trying to forget his kenjutsu lessons, then tried to relearn them all at once, then tried to forget them again. He's tired of it.

He's the son of the White Fang, and he doesn't care who knows it.

He flows through the familiar patterns, and she's good, very good, but she isn't used to fighting an opponent with a chakra-infused blade. Or, in this case, an entirely chakra blade.

And that's not all Kakashi can do.

He throws every ninjutsu he can think of at her, all five elements, one after the other. Nothing connects, but that's not his goal.

It's all distraction, with a side of showing off for the audience.

He finally sees an opening, and drives his sword into her shoulder, which twitches a few times and then her hand opens and she drops her sword.

She narrows her eyes at him and throws a brace of shuriken.

He knocks some of them out of the air, dodges some more, and catches the last on his forearm.

He calmly takes it out and heals the cut.

"Oh, come on!" she says. "You're a medic, too!?"

She acquits herself well in the ensuing taijutsu battle, especially with one arm hanging useless, but he hits her other shoulder with a glowing green hand and it stops responding.

She flops her arms a bit, then glares at him. "I forfeit."

He offers her a polite salute, and fixes the shoulder he messed up with his medical ninjutsu.

But not before checking that sensei is still okay. He can't get out of Iwa soon enough.

* * *

Orochimaru is smug. So smug that Kakashi kind of wishes he'd lost on purpose, just so he doesn't have to look at his smug face.

"Yeah, yeah," Jiraiya says. "Your whole team passed, huzzah, let it go already."

"Ahem," the Sandaime says.

Everyone ignores him. Which is to be expected from Jiraiya and Orochimaru, really, and with sensei trying to mediate between them, well, Kakashi at least isn't surprised in the least that no one's listening.

Kakashi adjusts his brand new chuunin vest. It's stiff and uncomfortable, and he knows that a few hard missions will fix that, but that's not in his future. Maybe he'll look into one of those custom uniforms.

Sensei tried to be tactful, so Kakashi ended up dragging Orochimaru over to their apartment to explain. Kakashi has definitely passed, he is definitely a chuunin, but Orochimaru has submitted an official recommendation to his file that Kakashi not be sent out in the field.

This is perfectly fair; Kakashi never truly overcame his panic every time he left the village, his mind filled with what-ifs, and the Madara mission could have gone very differently if he'd frozen as completely as he had in the cave.

Once, Kakashi would have been devastated by this restriction. It's certainly what sensei expects.

Weirdly, it's Orochimaru who is the most comfort. He isn't contemptuous or condescending, and Kakashi knows that he wouldn't bother to hide it if he was. He isn't disgusted by Kakashi's weakness.

Danzou is dead, Madara is dead, Obito is alive and sane, Konoha is safe.

And Kakashi is due to begin his apprenticeship at the hospital next week, and he's already been invited to join two different research teams. Not just as a courtesy, either; the team leaders came to blows over who would get him. He has a place in this village.

He'd be researching right now, actually, but the Sandaime called this meeting, and while Kakashi isn't technically invited, he was with Orochimaru and sensei when they were summoned, and he's curious.

"I have news," the Sandaime says. Loudly.

His students continue squabbling.

The Sandaime sighs. "I want you to know that I've decided to retire."

 _That_ shuts them up.

"It's time to choose a successor," the Sandaime says.

Kakashi has a moment of utter panic before realizing that he's not even supposed to be here and there's no way he's a candidate. Yet. Or ever, if he has any say in the matter.

"Not me!" Jiraiya says, backing away slowly.

"Absolutely not," Orochimaru says.

The Sandaime looks hopefully at sensei.

"First," sensei says, "no. And second, when Kushina finds out you had this meeting without her, she's going to be _furious_. I hope you plan to retire very, very far from here."

"Ah," the Sandaime says.

"Well that's that, then," Jiraiya says. "Kushina it is."

"The Council has indicated that she is not sufficiently experienced for the position at this time," the Sandaime says. "It has to be one of you."

They look at him.

He looks at them.

They look at him.

"It's a great honor," the Sandaime insists weakly.

Kakashi finds a chair and settles himself comfortably. He's glad he didn't miss this.


End file.
